New Book: Best Practices for Knowledge Workers (digital edition)

A couple of weeks ago the book "Best Practices for Knowledge Workers" has been published by Future Strategies Inc. in association with the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC).

The authors Nathaniel Palmer, Keith Swenson, Jim Sinur, Dr Setrag Khoshafian, Linus Chow, et al describe Adaptive Case Management (ACM) in the current era of digitization, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent BPMS and BPM Everywhere. We (Juergen Kress, Ricardo Puttini and myself) are very proud contributers in the digital edition of this book. With our chapter „ACM Methodology: Best practices to design and implement solutions for knowledge workers“ we are sharing our experiences from multiple ACM implementations.

ACM Methodology Chapter 

BPM-based solutions have brought major advances to work organization and automation. However, given BPM’s strong basis on formal workflow definition, oftentimes BPM solutions are not well suited for work scenarios where a precise workflow cannot be strictly defined. Work in such scenarios is highly dependent on knowledge-based decisions about activities and outcomes, leading to multiple work paths and business rules that can become quite complex or even unfeasible to model and completely automate. In these cases, a different technology support approach is required. The focus is not to isolate and automate decisions and rules, but rather to deliver opportunistic information support to the knowledge worker to accomplish them. Adaptive Case Management (ACM) rises as a successful design pattern for this.

The ACM methodology described in our chapter covers typical software engineering disciplines: business modeling, analysis, design and implementation. This approach provides well-understood separation of interest criteria, which aims at making it easier for business analysts and software architects to understand and incorporate ACM design practices into their current professional skills. Additionally, specialized business models and software artifacts required for the successful realization of ACM design pattern are presented and developed in details in the following sections.

In order to make the concepts and the development activities more clear, each section within this chapter includes a case study example. Therefore, the reader is able to practice each exercise and to template the deliverables of each phase of the development. The ACM methodology was developed over the past years during execution of actual ACM projects in different customers and industry areas. Therefore, it brings together practical experience and real use of existing ACM software platforms.

Visit the Future Strategies bookstore here.

  

ACM Methodology Kit

As part of the book Best Practices for Knowledge Workers (digital edition) we published an Adaptive Case Management Methodology. The proposed ACM Methodology is based on the five phases, which covers typical software engineering disciplines: Business Modeling, Visualization, Analysis, Design and Implementation. New software artifact models for ACM user interfaces (ACM Workspace) and ACM solution analysis and design (ACM Canvas) are also among the contributions of this work. ACM design leverages the recently established Case Management Modeling Notation (CMMN v1.1). Templates of software artifacts, developed for each methodology phase, are also presented. These support a guided outcome and ensure projects progress and success.

Download the Kit.