ASAS 2014 - Thijs Petter

Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

Standards Battle in Daily Practice

BPMN and Case Management

Thijs Petter, Hidera


Agenda

• Short background on software development• Experiences with Case Management• What is CMMN

• Background• Concepts of CMMN• Modeling constructs


Background of Software Development

Focus: Business Applications


Software Development for Business Applications


ChallengesAfter development


Challenge 1: Upgrading the standard package


Challenge 2: Integrating the standard package


So, what did we (the ICT industry) do?• Challenges

• Integration with the existing customer application landscape• Customization & configuration vs. new releases

• Application integration • Service orientation – SOA, ESB• Open standards – XML, Web Services, HTTP, Rest, etc.

• Application customization through “configuring models”• Focus on business rules and processes (and more …)• BPMN emerged as de facto standard for process automation


Typical Product Stack


BPMN Strengths & Challenges

• Flowchart is a widely adopted abstraction• BPM + SOA makes a great case for application integration

• Composite applications

• Flowchart is pro-active, procedural, predefined• Order of activity is fixed up front• Unclear relationship with the “file at hand”

• Not well suited for application development (more for integration)

• Case Management as an emergent standard for process automation• Knowledge worker can choose the “plan” at runtime (rather than analyst coding it)• Reactive, event-driven rather than procedural• Focused on the “case” to handle (more object/file oriented than task oriented)


Practical Experiences

With Cordys Case Management


Cordys Case Management at CIZ

• Assignment• Validate eligibility for Care Under the AWBZ• Annual AWBZ Expenditure 28,5 Billion Euros

• Challenges• Replace primary process system (1500 internal, 20.000 external users)• Need for turn-key migration

• Tightly integrated in Healthcare Chain• BPM based project failed

• Simple requirements ok, more complex requirements too difficult

• New system architecture based on Case Management• Single top-level case model automates entire system (>1 Million cases per year)• Close interaction with business owners in model development


Standardization


Case Management Standardization: CMMN

• Case Management standardization• IBM, Cordys, Oracle, and quite a few others

• Spec released May 5th, 2014• Case Management Model & Notation – CMMN


Spec example: Claims Management


My first CMMN model


Education Submit & Review


Initial “Designer”


CMMN Concepts


CMMN Pillars

• Runtime Planning• Constraining choices instead of prescribing

• Guard / Stage / Milestone• Declarative model

• Including description of entities• Offering structure to ECA style rules


Design Time vs. Run Time Planning

• Business analysts responsible for design time• Planned/pre-defined tasks and optional (“discretionary”) tasks

• Case workers responsible for run time• Perform planned tasks, add optional tasks


CMMN Modeling Constructs

• Case File• Explicit description of case information structure• Case File can generate “change events”

• Case Plan• Workflow-like description of the tasks etc.• Reacts to events in the case file and in the case plan

• Case Roles• Enable authorization within the case plan


CMMN Modeling Constructs – The Case Plan• Case Plan consists of

• Plan Items• Sentries

• Plan Item• Has a type definition (Task, Stage, Milestone, Event)• Properties “Repeatable” and “Required”• Has a lifecycle, determined by States and Transitions• Introduced to enable patterns of definitions

• E.g. re-use a Task or a Stage in different places in the process

• Sentry• Event + Condition under which a Plan Item starts or stops


Plan Item Types: Task, Stage, Milestone, Event• Task

• Single unit of work• Human Task, Case Task, Process Task• Blocking or non-blocking

• Stage• Grouping & nesting of plan items

• Milestone• A goal that can be reached; can be used to track progress of the case

• Event• Enable “listening” to Time and custom User events


Plan Item Lifecycle – dependent on type

Task & Stage lifecycleNote: Stage propagates transitions

Milestone & Event lifecycle


Sentry

• Plan Item lifecycle is influenced through Sentries

• Sentry activation (“sentry is satisfied”)• After a transition on plan items or case file items in the case (“On Part”)

• E.g. Order.Create, Document.Update, Review.Complete, MailTask.Fault, EersteInleverDatum.Occur

• Additionally a condition (“If Part”)

Entry criterion Task.Start

Exit criterion Task.Exit


Sentry Examples

Task A

Task B

Task A

Task B

Task C

Task A

Task B

Task C

Milestone A

Task A

Task A


Discretionary Items (“Optional tasks”)• Discretionary Item is a kind of a Plan Item

• Decision to add this to the plan cannot be made at design time• Case Worker decides to add it to the Case Plan

• Case contains a list of discretionary items• Structured through planning tables at the level of Stage or HumanTask• Custom filtering through Applicability Rule

• Determines whether the item is “currently” applicable

Stage A

DT1

Task A

Discretionary Task 1

Discretionary Task 2


All DecoratorsPlanning Table

Exit Criterion

Repeatable

Manual ActivationExpandable

Auto Completion

Required

Entry Criterion


Concluding remarks

• CMMN is complementary to BPMN

• Graphical notation needs attention• But let’s first build up some experience

• CMMN is a new standard• Vendor adoption slowly taking shape


Thank you & questions

Contact details

Thijs Petter

[email protected]/in/thijspetter

ASAS 2014 - Thijs Petter

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