Assessing suitability of adaptive case management

Business Process Management (BPM) includes methods and techniques to support the execution of business processes. In recent years, Adaptive Case Management (ACM) has been proposed as new BPM technology for supporting knowledge-intensive processes. However, there is currently no structured way of quickly deciding upon the suitability of an ACM system to a specific business process. This paper presents a framework for assessing to which extent ACM is suitable for a particular business process. It distinguishes between process characteristics that ACM can support, characteristics that ACM can support but are not ideal, and characteristics that ACM cannot support. The framework also explains the rationale behind each assessment, and refers to alternatives in case ACM is not suitable for the process that needs to be supported. Thus, the framework provides a transparent and useful advice about which kind of BPM technology is most suitable to support a business process to the best extent. A preliminary evaluation of the framework has been carried out in collaboration with an IT consultancy company that advises its clients on BPM technology