For knowledge workers, automating the business process so that the system can “tell them what to do” is the entirely wrong focus for IT system support. The focus of the system should instead be on presenting to knowledge workers the current status of the project, measured a couple of different ways. The distinction is subtle, but important. Continue reading
One of the best examples of an ACM system, one that received a gold award in this year’s Excellence in ACM awards, was the system developed by Computas for the Norwegian Food Safety Authority. The focus of this post is on how they achieved true end-user agility in their process plans. Continue reading
What is the role of two-dimensional process graphing for knowledge workers in Adaptive Case Management (ACM)? It is a given that an ACM system must support some form of process plan. This post explores how a knowledge worker might specify a process plan, what are the requirements on that means of specifying, and what technical training requirements exist for the workers who specify the processes. Continue reading
Many conversations on Adaptive Case Management follow a similar pattern: start by agreeing that (1) a context to associate all the information for a case is good, (2) there is a need to represent goals, (3) a need to assign tasks to people for notification /reminders, and finally (4) the suggestion that the case manager will need pre-defined process snippets to use in the case. The argument is very logical: why force the case manager to draw up the process every time when you could create the process snippets in advance, and at run time just use them. This logic is flawed and this long post is an attempt to explain exactly why. Continue reading
Michael Poulin made an excellent post called “Why business process is always structured?” which delves into the question of why people believe that work is predictable when often it is not. He compares ACM and BPM and the illusion that makes them appear the same. Continue reading
Written by Atul Gawande, this book outlines the power that a lowly checklist brings to “get things right”. The book is certainly an interesting read, but it goes beyond that; if you study how people work, or are tasked to try to improve the effectiveness of workers, then reading this book is an imperative. Continue reading
I just sat through the BPM 2010 keynote speech given by Phil Gilbert which I thought was worth a quick note here.
He was asked to talk on the future of BPM, but clarified that he would really just focus on the the next decade with three main topics: Continue reading
We all struggle with the zillions of different definitions of BPM fostering endless discussions to find the one true meaning for the term. In one such discussion, Thomas Olbrich, came up with an intriguing idea: what would be different if there was no BPM? Continue reading
We held a tweetjam on the subject of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) on July 15. I have already posted part 1 and part 2. Here is part 3. Continue reading
We held a tweetjam on the subject of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) on July 15. It is going to take me three posts to get this all in. See Part 1. This post contains part 2 which contains the bulk of the discussion of how ACM relates to BPM: is it different, and how? Continue reading
Thinking Matters 