Case management for knowledge work

Broadly speaking there are two approaches to managing collaborative work

Structured processes

Adhoc Process

A structured process is a process whose path can be clearly defined in advance. The order in which activities are to be performed is also  defined in advance  Process participants have very little discretion to change the  order or add a new activity on  their own discretion.  Structure process are suitable for certain kind of processes such as Order fulfillment, Expense approval etc... 

However, nature of our work is changing. Our work is becoming more and more knowledge driven. A knowledge worker (KW) perform his work based upon the information and his experience. A KW needs more discretion for performing his work. Adhoc processes are more suitable for such work. Adaptive case management is a discipline for implementing adhoc process. ACM automate every work which can be automated and leave rest of the work at the discretion the skill and knowledge of KW. A case has following components: -

§  Events

–      Event-driven

–      System and user-defined events

–      Case participant  can raise certain events on discretion

§  Content

–      Content/Document  repository integration content management system(CMIS)

§  Activities

–      Configurable at design time and runtime

–      BPMN, Human Tasks, Custom

–      Case participant  can  add/delete certain events on his discretion

–      Case participant  can   change the order in which activities are performed  certain   on his discretion

§  Data

–      Business Objects

–      External

§  Policies

–      Business Rules

§  Stakeholders

–     Case worker can add/remove stakeholder during case life-cycle

–     Case worker can change the permission give to a particular case worker

§  Milestones

–     Case management is a goal driven approach. A goal may have several milestones

–     When all the milestones are met, the goal of the case   is met and case is closed

–     Case worker can declare a milestone is met or not met at any during case lifecycle

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Most of the software vendors for BPMS (Business process management suite) are supporting case management. IBM, Oracle etc... provide support of case management. Case management is also called iProcess management and such system are called iBPMS

Some of the domain in which case management is very suitable are Patient Care, claim management in insurance etc..