using enterprise activity streams to provide a case management solution

1Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Emergent Case Management for Ad-hoc ProcessesA Solution Based on Microblogging and Activity Streams

Martin Böhringer

Chemnitz University of TechnologyBusiness Information Systems Research GroupProf. Dr. Peter Gluchowskihttp://tu-chemnitz.de/wirtschaft/wi2 http://twitter.com/boehr

2Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

About me

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Europe_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg

Chemnitz University of Technology

PhD Student since 2/09Business Information Systems

Focus on Social Software for the Enterprise

3Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Agenda

• Ad-hoc Processes• (Emergent) Case Management• Possible Solution: Activity Streams• Conclusions

4Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

The problem

“Knowledge worker productivity is the biggest of the 21st century management challenges.”

Peter Drucker

Where is BPM in this picture?

5Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

vs.

Left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Final_assembly_3.jpg Right: TheImageGroup http://www.flickr.com/photos/theimagegroup/369893824/sizes/m/in/photostream/

“classic” BPM knowledge work

holistic BPM

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Current discussions

Recently, BPM discusses Case Management as solution for ad-hoc processes

7Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Case Management

• No common understanding of the term• Forrester: „A highly structured, but also

collaborative, dynamic, and information-intensive process […]. […] the case folder would include all the documents, data, collaboration artifacts, policies, rules, analytics, and other information needed to process and manage the case”

8Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Towards a Framework

• Case Management rethought– What is the goal?

• Supporting the execution of less structured processes

– Who is the user?• Mainly Knowledge Workers

– What does their work consist of?• Knowledge-intensive Activities

– What are artifacts of their work?• Documents• Actions in Legacy Information Systems• Information nuggets, communication

9Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

(Emergent) Case ManagementEmergent Case Management

Users

Activities and ArtifactsInformation Systems Cases

are assigned to

are re-presented in

use define

create/ execute / work on / collaborate on...

Activities

Artifacts

ERP

Wiki

CRMWMS

Email

Microblogging

Blog

Face2Face

A

B

D

C

10Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Case Management and Social Software?

• Suggestion: – Social Software tools could support Case

Management functionality– Or even: Social Software tools already provide

some kind of Case Management Microblogging and its successor Activity Streams

11Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Example Twitter

(Links to) Artifacts

(Documentation of) Activities

Hashtags as Case Identifiers

12Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Example Facebook

(Links to) Artifacts

(Documentation of) Activities

13Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Relation to Case Management?Emergent Case Management

Users

Activities and ArtifactsInformation Systems Cases

are assigned to

are re-presented in

use define

create/ execute / work on / collaborate on...

Activities

Artifacts

ERP

Wiki

CRMWMS

Email

Microblogging

Blog

Face2Face

A

B

D

CActivity Stream

Annotation to stream entries

Included in the stream

14Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Example: „extended“ Facebook

Stefan created a new invoice.Stefan created an invoice for customer Testcompany for 23,000.00$. http://intranet/easlink23asd9

on my way to NY to visit out customer Testcompany.

@peter could you please have a look at the draft of our sales presenation? You find it at http://intranet/easlink9dsf83a

Martin created a new presentation.Stefan created the presentation „Sales presentation for Testcompany. http://intranet/easlink2390d6

(Links to) Artifacts

(Documentation of) Activities

15Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Example: „extended“ Twitter

(Documentation of) Activities

Hashtags as case identifier

16Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Example: Salesforce Chatter

(Links to) Artifacts

(Documentation of) Activities

Built-in case support

17Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Towards Enterprise Activity Streams

• Our goal: build and test an Enterprise Activity Stream system with integrated support for Case Management

• Current work packages:– Extending activitystrea.ms protocol for Enterprise Activity

Streams (started)– Building a middleware for activity extraction and

management (started)– Building a frontend for Case Management based on

Enterprise Activity Streams (planned)– Test Case Management with Activity Streams in real life

scenarios

18Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Challenges

• Integrate in legacy systems, capture all activities in the enterprise

• Lots of distributed „activity providers“• Privacy and rights management• Front-end design to avoid information

overflow

19Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

Conclusions

• Enterprise activity streams will be in the market in 2011– Salesforce Chatter– Yammer‘s new version– Socialcast Ease (Enterprise Activity Stream Engine)

• 2 options for BPM to benefit:– Case Management Tools include EAS functionality– BPM community adopts EAS systems for Case

Management

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Thank you!

Martin Böhringer

http://twitter.com/boehr martin.boehringer@wirtschaft.tu-chemnitz.de

21Martin Böhringer, Chemnitz University of Technology

BPM & Activity Streams

Business Process Management

Ok, we support Ad-hoc processes with Activity Streams. But where is the

Management part?

Tag analysis and gardeningSetting culture and rulesSupporting emerging structures and special needs with botsCombining EAS with Process Models?