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TIBCO® BPM Enterprise 5.5.0

# 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 that 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 "the case object". Case data is centrally managed by TIBCO BPM Enterprise 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.

The association between case states and case actions is such that your application can be configured to apply a specific case action only when the case is in certain states. For example, you can ensure that the case allows the 'Change Delivery Address' case action in all states except in the 'Delivered' state.

The following diagram illustrates the possible life-cycle, states, and case actions of a simple Order case:

In this 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 that the order needs to be packaged, and so on, through the entire life-cycle. At any of the allowed states, a user has the option to initiate one of the available case actions to perform an operation on the case, such as canceling the order or changing the delivery address.

Occasionally, special activities can be made available to users progressing the case by an executing business process related to the case. These activities can either be mandatory or optional. 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 BPM Enterprise. 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 interacts with their order management system, irrespective of whether or not it 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 must be specific to order management, and also include customized versions of such general purpose BPM and case management capabilities, all made available in a form that is customized for order management. BPM Enterprise 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 associated with a particular case, as well as view all events that have taken place for a case.

## Industry Standard Classifications of Case Management

BPM Enterprise supports aspects of both types of industry standard classifications of case management: Production Case Management (PCM) and Adaptive Case Management (ACM):

- 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 BPM Enterprise.

- 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 BPM Enterprise.

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 in the spectrum of these classifications, rather than at one polar extreme or another. BPM Enterprise provides the features needed to develop applications that include aspects of both classifications.

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