Case Management
From a conceptual standpoint, a case is the "subject of a process." Examples are "Order", "Exception", "Customer", or "Claim". That is, you can have an "Order" case that is created when someone places an order for a product you sell. The type of cases you use depends on the type of business you are in.
All cases have a life-cycle that includes a number of states. You can think of case states as logical phases in the life-cycle of a case. A case has at least two states in its life-cycle: created and completed. Typically, a case will have other states. For example, an Order case could have states of Created, Fulfilled, Packaged, Delivered, and Completed.
Central to a case is case data. Case data is business data that is collected together as a business object. This set of case data that is collected together, including its state, is often referred to as "the case", or sometimes "the case object". Case data is centrally managed by ActiveMatrix BPM and can be accessed and updated by multiple BPM process applications. For example, for an Order case, the case data could include information such as order number, order date, item ordered, and delivery address. Other applications, such as a billing application, can access and possibly modify this case data.
Another key aspect of cases are case actions. These are business processes that are defined in a case management application to provide the end-user with the ability to apply an action on a case. For example, for an Order case, there may be actions such as "Cancel" or "Change Delivery Address." Case actions are operations that may be initiated by the end-user as needed; they are not mandatory.
Case states and case actions have an association such that you can configure your application to allow a specific case action to be applied only when the case is in certain states. For example, you could ensure that the case allows the 'Change Delivery Address' case action in all states except in a state of 'Delivered'.
The following illustrates the possible life-cycle, states, and case actions for a simple Order case:
In this Order example, after the case is started (created), a work item is generated to inform the appropriate user(s) that the order needs to be fulfilled. After the user fulfills the order and submits the work item, the case state changes to Fulfilled, then the appropriate user(s) are informed the order needs to be packaged, and so on, through the entire life-cycle. At any of the allowable states, a user can optionally initiate one of the available case actions to perform an operation on the case, such as cancelling the order or changing the delivery address.
On occasions, an executing business process related to the case may also make available special activities to users progressing the case, which may be mandatory or optional to perform. These activities are typically much more dynamic in nature as they are made available dynamically due to the circumstances determined by the process, and the users interacting with the process, and not just simply by the state of the case and the predetermined actions designed into the supporting BPM application. They will only apply in special cases and, therefore, will not be appropriate for all cases, and will not be seen or performed for every case. These special activities are called "Ad-hoc" activities in ActiveMatrix BPM. Examples of this for an Order management case might be custom build options to an item in the order, foreseen product customization prior to dispatch, special packaging, or delivery requirements that are bespoke for this order.
BPM applications are increasingly seen as business applications that require an application-type-specific user interface, rather than having many BPM applications being served by a single general-purpose user interface that can be used with any BPM application. This is especially true for case management BPM applications. In the above example, the user will want to interact with their "order management system" and will not care that this is implemented using general-purpose case management capabilities layered on top of general-purpose work management and business process execution capabilities. For this application to comprise a usable system, the user interface will need to be specific to order management, but include customized versions of such general purpose BPM and case management capabilities, all made available in a form that makes sense for order management. ActiveMatrix BPM supports this by providing customizable user interface components that provide a user interface for the different aspects of case management and BPM that can easily be combined into custom applications. Sample user interface applications that can be easily customized that are built out of these components are also provided, enabling the production of such custom user interfaces in a simple and quick way, requiring the minimum amount of technical skill to produce.
In a case management application, users can view lists of currently active cases, list the work items and process instances associated with a particular case, as well as view all events that have taken place for a case.
Industry Standard Classifications of Case Management
ActiveMatrix BPM supports aspects of both types of industry standard classifications of case management: Production Case Management (PCM) and Adaptive Case Management (ACM):
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PCM - Production Case Management is used where cases have some limited unpredictability in the way they are processed. PCM applications provide a fixed repertoire of operations that the knowledge worker can decide to use, or not, depending on the specific circumstances of the case being progressed. The set of appropriate operations varies, depending on the role of the knowledge worker and the current state of the case itself.
Key features of PCM, case states and case actions, are provided in ActiveMatrix BPM.
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ACM - Adaptive Case Management handles cases where the processing is unpredictable and the end state may not be well defined. They often require input from other stakeholders in an unpredictable manner, reacting to events and circumstances that may not be clear at the outset of the case. However, event-adaptive cases work within a given context, which is known at the outset (for example an "order" does not turn into an "insurance claim").
Key features of ACM, ad-hoc activities and case linkage capabilities, are provided in ActiveMatrix BPM.
The primary difference between the two classifications is that PCM case management applications are more predictable (like conventional business processes) and ACM case management applications are more dynamic and unpredictable. Most case management applications fall somewhere in the spectrum of these classifications, rather than at one polar extreme or another. ActiveMatrix BPM provides the features needed to develop applications that include aspects of both classifications.
