What is a case and why do they need to manage

We will understand in terms

The word case (from the English. Case) means a case. In business vocabulary, it is customary to refer to the concept of a specific situation and the way to resolve it, including a description of the initial situation, decisions and ways chosen by the participants, their actions, relevant materials, and of course, the result. Case studies have long been trained by business school students, examining them and simulating different scenarios for the development of situations.

The tasks arising in our life can be conditionally divided into certain (immediately exactly known what they are and what to do with them) and uncertain (there is not enough information at the start to determine exactly how to solve them). Certain tasks are often described by job descriptions, there are process maps and regulations for them. These are often recurring situations for which the behavior pattern is described and it can easily be programmed in the information system. But as soon as the situation does not fit into the pattern, an uncertain situation or case arises. It is necessary to analyze, make decisions, make choices, design a new template. This process is called case management .

Cases can also be repeated or similar. In this case, a case template is created on the basis of an already solved case, which can be used many times as a basis for solving new, similar situations. In this case, of course, this template can be changed, improved, supplemented. When the system allows you to learn from past situations and form “best practices”, this case management system is called adaptive .
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The term adaptive case management (ACM) was first proposed in the 2010 Workflow Management Coalition. AFM is a technology that allows you to flexibly manage the process of solving the problem, depending on the development of the situation.



A case in ACM is a kind of “case” where all information about a task is stitched — case participants (people), materials (documents, video / audio / photos, diagrams and drawings, indicators, etc.), case studies, business -processes that were performed during the solution of the problem, as well as the relationship of all these elements.

A bit of history

Case, in fact, once was just a folder containing all the information relating to a particular case.
With the development of technology, information systems have emerged on the market that support ACM and unify the capabilities of various types of systems - Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

There were templates (the most successful solutions), access rights management (case owner can determine who will connect to tasks and case data in what capacity. Tasks (processes) came from BPM systems that can be assigned to participants by attaching the necessary content (indicating the link to place of its storage), and then monitor the result. Corporate content management systems (ECM) gave powerful tools for working with large volumes of unstructured information, the ability to classify content, track document versions ntov, to differentiate access rights and to log events.

Today, ACM systems are at the junction of classic enterprise applications:



In addition, AFM introduces elements of social networks into corporate systems, where everyone can easily create their own pages and manage them without the help of administrators or programmers. Now everyone can create their own processes on the fly, determine the composition of the team that has access to the task or project, assign roles, enter their own rules.

What are the advantages

The ACM puts the person in the center of events, giving him the opportunity and the right to decide how each case will develop.
If previously it was thought that it is impossible to automate non-formalized business processes, now the concept of ACM refutes this.

Another advantage of adaptive case management is that now you can save great money on analysts and developers, solving the problem of automating their processes. Now you yourself adapt your system (first of all - business processes) to changes in the external and internal environment.

How it works

As soon as the situation begins to take a “turnover case” (you see that the described, hard business processes will not help you), the next life cycle begins:



Phases 3 and 4 (research and execution) can be repeated cyclically many times, if the uncertainty is large and the final result is not visible in one iteration. Also, cases can generate child cases, lining up in a hierarchy.

How to understand what is in front of us - the case?

Are all unstructured tasks cases? Not. Only that situation makes sense in the form of a case, a solution that has practical meaning, useful for someone in the future.

Signs of the case:
1. The control object is a problem (task), not a process;
2. Consists of participants, business processes, content;
3. In the course of execution, there are (or are likely) changes in processes, subtasks, participants;
4. High level of uncertainty of tasks, not enough information at the start;
5. In the course of implementation, there is an accumulation of useful and further applicable knowledge (decisions history, best practices, patterns), this knowledge and information can be passed on to others.

How does the modern ACM-system

From what has been said, in general, it becomes clear what the ACM should be able to do today:
• Combine content, participants and business processes into a new entity - case. Integrate seamlessly with BPM and ECM systems;
• Manage users - participants of the case, their rights and roles;
• Notify on case events, have team communication tools;
• Store communications, sequence and results of tasks, case history, journaling all events;
• Have a developed system of tagging, search, filters;
• Be able to search, create, save, use, modify case patterns.
There is an opinion that the presence of the ACM functional in the information system indicates a high maturity of the system.

Where to apply

ACM today is beginning to be actively used in the following areas:
• Provision of complex services: processing of citizens' appeals, management of client cases (files), provision of legal, financial, informational, medical services, etc .;
• Project management: targeted programs, construction, research and development, development of complex products, marketing campaigns;
• Specialized activities: court cases, lawmaking, public initiatives, etc.
ACM, as is already clear from the above, is ideal for those organizations where there are no clear regulations, where the formalization of processes is difficult for several reasons (frequent changes, no resources, etc.). In this case, ACM can not only help in current work, but also become the tool that will allow you to better understand your own processes, identify those that are amenable to formalization, and provide constant improvements.

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list. Look around you and you will find cases that you encounter daily.