The Case For Cases

Last year, the data produced in the world would fill DVD stack reaching from the Earth to moon and back. And it's growing exponentially. What does that mean for the enterprise? Piles of data do not always result in more information. On the contrary.

Especially for people performing knowledge work, it means it becomes harder to sift through vast amounts of information sources and share the right information with the appropriate people. It's not only time consuming, it's also risky. Tweets, Google+, Facebook, Blogs and Press articles are abundant and have typically a low signal-to-noise ratio. On top of that employees have to keep track of what's happening in their CRM, document management and many other enterprise systems. This means a greater exposure to loads of data that becomes on average less relevant. Procrastination never had an easier job looking for susceptible victims.

A case management solution is a fancy word for a system to share and discuss important topics in an business environment.  It's function is to bring people together on topics like eg introducing a new sales strategy or an important customer that may cancel a big order.  A case is the most efficient instrument to share related documents, links and tasks for topics like that.  In other words, a case is a social collaboration space for a specific topic.

To some extend, the scope of a case could be compared with an email discussion thread.  Before you bring it on, let me explain why that is a problem.  Email is ubiquitous and serves its purpose as the least common denominator for communication.  But using email has major drawbacks when used as the tool of collaboration.  First, you have to assume that people always hit Reply-All.  Reading a conversation where some people answer inline, some answer on top and some at the bottom is a challenge to say the least.  Searching the latest version of an attachment in a conversation is hard and error prone.  Involving someone later in an email discussion is hopeless as not everyone includes the whole discussion thread.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying cases should replace email threads.  People will continue to leverage email as a unified inbox for the foreseeable future.  But cases provide a much better structure for information that is currently buried in the emails themselves.  I think we will see a shift towards email being the unified notification inbox and the content will be stored in dedicated systems like case management systems.

For organizations larger then 10 people, it's a matter of professionalism to equip employees with a case management system.  It's the way to share relevant information in chaotic world with loads of noise and only a bit of signal.  People will be better informed and collaborating becomes simpler.  These improvements in the internal organization already justify adopting a case management system.  The bonus comes from collaborations with external business partners like prospects, clients and suppliers.  The advantages are just the same in this situation, and on top you show a professional approach to doing business.
Regrettably, not all solutions use the term case for this concept.  Some solutions call it a task and others invent a new name.  But it should be clear that every organization deserves a solution for social collaboration and case management is a crucial aspect of that.

BPM And Fruit Ninja

In The Zero Code Hypothesis, Scott Francis observes the contrast between 2 trends in BPM right now.  On the one hand there is Camunda explicitly saying the zero coding ambition is broken.  Scott comments:

It is kind of a fascinating counter-point to the movement to make BPM “more accessible” to the business, and I think it represents a pretty sizable chunk of the open source market that is in strong agreement.

On the other hand, there is the trend to further simplify process design for non-technical people.  Several BPM vendors concluded that BPMN is too complex for simple processes and started experimenting with process builders for people that don’t know BPMN.

Key passages from their presentation included “Enabling people who normally couldn’t do BPM or BPMN”.  BPMN was described as the invisible hand surrounded by UI.

Scott concludes that this is a contrast:

And to think that these sessions were all on day 1 of the same conference – totally different hypotheses on how to approach BPM and BPMN.

It’s a contrast, but I don’t think these two trends are contradictory. To me this is a sign that the BPM sector starts to realize that it’s dealing with two very distinct stakeholders.

BPM always has been about automating people tasks and combining those with technical system integration steps.  As such, BPM serves 1) non-technical business people that work out concrete steps how the organization should accomplish larger goals.  And 2) technical people weaving in the automatic steps and integration with other systems.

At Effektif, we take those two stakeholders as the starting point, and both types of users must get a tailored user experience.

In my opinion, it only takes a well-aimed Fruit Ninja move from the vendors to slice BPM so that both stakeholders are served well.  Meaning, with the right approach both business people and technical people can be served properly.

Slicing BPM becomes obvious if you consider all people related aspects separate from the technical aspects.  All people aspects in a process can be configured by non-technical business people.  Things like sending simple notification emails and filling out a form to complete a task don’t require technical knowledge. By default, all processes should have the ability to attach documents, links and have a discussion.  With these capabilities, non technical people can already build a broad range of useful processes that don't require technical integrations.

Fruit Ninja precision is required to resist the temptation of adding small technical aspects that enable the next interesting feature.  I believe that is where traditional BPM vendors fail miserably. In order to keep simplicity, a BPM system must cut out rigorous any technical aspect from business person’s user experience.

That slicing between technical and non-technical aspects is applied rigorously throughout the Effektif product.  It ensures a superior user experience for the non technical managers automating people processes.

The 4 Best Books I Listened To Recently

For some reason or another reading books is just not meant for me. However, when jogging or cycling, I first switched from listening to music to podcasts. Now that really works for me. Here's my favorite podcasts

This American Life
Hanselminutes
HNpod
The Java Posse
NPR's Planet Money

More recently I got an Audible subscription and really enjoyed these books

The 7 habits of highly effective people, by Stephen R. Covey

This should be a mandatory book in high school. Even if you think you're socially skilled, this book will show you whole new dimensions of listening to people and taking a constructive approach in communication.  It's actually this title that inspired me to name my new startup effektif.com.






In the plex, by Steven Levy

This is a very inspiring story with loads of cool anecdotes.  You get a peek inside Google when it was booming.  It shows that by taking an overdose of ambition, you can look from a different angle at problems then most people do.  The ambition that sparks out of the book works really contagious. It made me believe I could actually start a booming business of my own :)

The lean startup, by Eric Ries

A classic by now and a must read for everyone that thinks of founding a startup.  After the inspiring 'In the plex' that made me dream, this was the perfect counterweight that put my feet back on the ground.  It explains that most startups fail and provides a very practical approach to maximizing chances of success.

Getting things done, by David Allen

Confession: For this book I actually read the paper version.  After my studies, this is one of the only books I've managed to read completely since then.  And that's intended as a complement to the book :)  It's a practical guide on how typical knowledge workers can reduce stress and get more done. This book is related to the concept of inbox zero. If you are struggling with your inbox, go and read or listen to this book.





What great podcasts or books do you recommend?

Activiti Moved To Github

This morning, we moved the Activiti source code to Github. This move was long overdue and it's going to simplify working with the codebase a lot for all involved.

To learn more including pointers about pull requests, check out Joram's blog post about it.

Activiti 5.10 Just Got Really Fast

We just released Activiti 5.10 and it's another big milestone for the project:

• Serious performance improvements: See Joram's blog The Activiti performance showdown for the amazing details
• Tijs' book Activiti in Action published by Manning came out!
• Added support voor bpmn message start event
• Added capability for clients to validate a user's rights to start a process
• Added support for nested sub-processes and embedded subprocesses in designer
• Added support for catching intermediate and boundary message events
• Bug fixes and various smaller improvements. Check out the Release notes for more details

Kudo's Daniel Meyer, Frederik Heremans en Joram Barrez for achieving the major performance improvements.

Big thanks to Camunda for contributing many improvements and fixes in this release.

Congrats to Tijs for pulling off the book and the Activiti Eclipse Designer improvements.

Now it's up to you. You're just 1 free Download away from the most amazing BPM and workflow experience. Go for it!

Activiti 5.9 Is A Big Leap Forward

We're proud to announce Activiti 5.9 is released with some major improvements:

• Support for Exclusive Jobs and Plugability of the Job Executor Infrastructure
• Persistent event subscriptions (infrastructure)
• Intermediate signal throw / catch
• Event based gateway
• BPMN transaction (cancel end event & cancel boundary event)
• BPMN compensation (compensation catch & compensation throw)
• Interrupting error event subprocesses
• (Multiple) message start events
• Various bug fixes

Find the full release notes here.

Special thanks goes to Camunda, and Daniel Meyer in particular for the some great core engine feature contributions.

Go download and taste this grand cru release!

Activiti 5.8 Adds Asynchronous Continuations

Activiti is the Apache licensed BPMN process engine. We've just released version 5.8 which has following highlights:

• Asynchronous continations (tech preview)
• Added BPMN inclusive gateway
• Improved Spring support
• CDI integration improvements
• Bug fixes

Get an opinion of your own! Go download and try it out.

BPM In The Cloud

Recently the Activiti team started exploring which parts of BPM could be brought to the cloud effectively. The first thing we realized is that on the cloud, a requirement is self-service by professional consumers. This means that end users should be able to manage the apps they use. Up to now, BPM systems were managed by in-house IT departments.

Immediately it became clear that hosting traditional BPM engine on the cloud is a big technical challenge with a relative low value for professional consumers. We have to look for new ways to deliver BPM on the cloud.

BPM is about combining automatic steps with human task forms. Building task forms on the cloud is a valid concept. Look for example at Formstack. Combining such task forms in a process is a great idea I think. But the generic automatic steps in BPM processes are more problematic on the cloud.

What are those automatic steps that people want to do on the cloud? Well there is plenty of choice. Read data from a google spreadsheet, or salesforce account, then build a document that is uploaded to google docs or dropbox. It could be doable to let professional consumers build process descriptions in a web browser.

But what is often overlooked is that the data used in processes is too complex for end users. For example, from a human perspective, the data read from the spreadsheet is the same as the data that has to be put in a PDF in some subsequent step in the process. But the building blocks that are used to compose workflow processes have to rely on concrete technical datatypes. There is almost always data conversion and projection necessary between those steps in a process. Specifying technical data type-conversions in a workflow is too complex for professional consumers.

We have to make it simpler.

On the other hand, the trend to Advanced Case Management (ACM) really fits well into the cloud. Dynamic management of tasks without a predefined flow matches perfect with the professional consumer needs and capabilities. The ability to associate documents and other forms of content makes it a great match. An extra dimension is added by the fact that a cloud solution for ACM enables seamless B2B collaboration.

This already gives an initial insight in the direction that the Activiti team is currently looking forward towards bringing BPM to the cloud.

Energy Distributors In Germany Using Activiti

On October first, Next Level Integration upgraded their product which now includes Activiti for dealing with the business process. Already 50 German energy distribution companies are now using this in production.

This presentation (in German) introduces their product and shows how they leverage Activiti processes: Prozesse im Messwesen (pdf) This is another great example of how Activiti is embedded into a product for a vertical market making it a lot more flexible and powerful.

Alfresco Activiti 5.7 Revamps Explorer

We're released Activiti 5.7 today, the embeddable workflow and BPM engine. This release includes a revamped Activiti Explorer. The new app merges the task management functionality of the previous Activiti Explorer with the admin functionality in Activiti Probe.



We're proud on this result. A celebration is in place here: Kudo's to all contributors! And special thanks to the Vaadin team for supporting us with the new Explorer.

Download it from the Activiti website.

And participate in the forums.

Recycling BPM

Peter Evans-Greenwood has written a post called BPM over promised and under delivered that is a clear description of a historic shift in the BPM space.

Peter refers to Taylor to indicate we've been looking at automation and BPM in basically an old school way.

The [Taylor] idea is that by driving our workers to follow optimal business processes we can ensure that we minimise costs while improving quality.

The early software applications and later BPM has been centered around that approach.

Departmental applications were first deployed to automate small repudiative tasks, such as tracking stock levels or calculating payrolls. Then we looked at the interactions between these tasks, giving birth to enterprise software in the process. Business Process Management (BPM) is the pinnacle of our efforts...

The Taylor historic context is great to get the picture. In the past, there were just a few people had the knowledge to break down goals into tasks for workers. Workers were little informed and just had to do as they were told. BPM systems took the same approach. BPM systems orchestrate and dump workers just have to perform small, simple, repetitive tasks.

That is indeed an aspect of BPM that I've always found problematic. In practice, it turns out to be very hard to find business processes in which the orchestration part can be totally automated. Human judgement is very hard to capture in predefined paths in a process flow.

With previously jBPM and now Activiti, we always took a very pragmatic approach. Over time it has become clear that embeddable BPM is a sweet spot. Enriching applications with the capability to combine human task forms with automatic steps has turned out to be a very valid proposition. Only in big banks we've seen usage that comes close to the traditional orchestration automation promise of BPM.

I also agree with Peter that

There has been some half steps in the right direction, with the emergence of Adaptive Case Management (ACM)

I think this trend is becoming clear by now, but it's Peter's post that made me think of an important potential reason for this: The democratization of information. Where in the past (read more then 10 years ago) only managers are informed and needed to break goals into tasks, now a lot more information has become freely accessible in organisations so that average workers become better informed and can make better decisions.

Also I've seen in most practical situations that processes grow organically. When people get asked a similar task multiple times, they tend to organise themselves better for dealing with these repetitive tasks. That way a business process grows bottom-up. There is not always a central, complete view of the process. It's often a very big challenge to establishing this central view of a business process. It usually takes a lot of interviews and conflict resolution to get to that central view. And you know what... this bottoms-up approach actually works well in most cases. Most often the optimizations that can be found in the central view of a process do not outweigh the effort to build the centralized process view.

In conclusion I think the top down aspect that aims at top down business process modeling the orchestration is ready for the scrapyard. Let's get rid of the BPM promise that business agility can be obtained by purchasing a BPM system. And let's recycle those bits and enhance case management with that expertise. By default people should be able to collaborate in an ad-hoc fashion. And when people spot repetitive patterns, everyone should be able to create their own small process flows for simplifying their own work. That form of process automation as an add-on to case management matches a lot better with the common needs of todays web and knowledge workers.

Alfresco's Activiti 5.6 Improves Mule and Camel Support

Highlights for the 5.6 release:

• Added direct Mule and Camel integration
• Easier way to retrieve businessKey from task listeners
• Improved support for Alfresco processes
• Added support for delegateExpressions in tasklistener
• Added support for BPMN multi instance in the eclipse designer
• Extended length of all user defined text columns to 4000
• See the full release notes

Get Activiti 5.6 now before it gets you!

Alfresco's Activiti 5.5 Released

Activiti is a superdelux BPMN 2.0 based process engine. 5.5 is again packed with a lot of new goodies:

• Added CDI support (Congrats to Camunda for this contribution!)
• Added dynamic sub task capabilities
• Added support for event/activity streams
• Tiese Barrell added support for default value for CustomServiceTask fields in the eclipse process designer
• Simplified persistence
• Performance improvements
• Bug fixes

Download Activiti 5.5 and find out how much more you can do with BPM power.

Mobile, Web Client Storage And Offline

Desktops and laptops will be mostly connected to the internet. So almost all software written today targeted for desktops and laptops is web based. For mobile apps, that is much more tricky. Mobile devices are used when people are on the move. While general connectivity coverage is increasing, it will still take quite a couple of years before all planes, trains and stations give you decent broadband required by today's apps.

For mobile apps it's a tough choice between HTML 5 and native apps. Native apps don't require to be connected, but you need to develop one for every platform (at least Android and iOS).

Martin Fowler's blog CrossPlatformMobile makes the valid point that cross platform toolkits are no attractive alternative. But then there is this section that really confuses me

The biggest issue here is offline use. If you can live with online all the time, then this won't be a problem, but you need offline you'll need to explore the various local storage options.

This seems to suggest that the local storage options to some extend would be able to reduce the need for connectivity. That would decide the mobile platform battle in favour of HTML 5 easily. But I still don't see how storage on the client side helps to remove the need for connectivity. If you load a webapp before you go offline, then it is possible to keep it running on local storage when connectivity is down. That is a nice extension to webapps.

But afaict it doesn't give the ability to work offline because loading the app still requires connectivity and a refresh gives a 404 page not found without the possibility to get the app back in the browser. Also the linked article doesn't really provide a solution for this.

Given that the respected Martin Fowler seems to indicate that web storage has to be looked at as a solution for offline usage of webapps, I assume I must be missing something. But what ?

I'm in general puzzled why browsers are so bad at using caches when working offline. Yet it seems like a solvable solution for browsers to use their cache to overcome these 2 obstacles of loading the app and refresh and make HTML 5 the ultimate mobile platform.

Do you see a solution so that HTML 5 becomes a valid mobile technology option that also covers offline usage?

Tijs Rademakers Joins Activiti

Tijs Rademakers joins Alfresco to supercharge Activiti. We are very proud to attract a top talented engineer like Tijs! Tijs brings a rich experience from consulting on various BPM related projects. Tijs is co-authoring his second Manning book. The first was Open Source ESB's in Action and he's is now working hard to complete Activiti in Action.
Tijs will continue to lead the Activiti Designer, an Eclipse plugin for authoring BPMN 2.0 processes. He will also be involved in architecting and building out the process capabilities to make Activiti the #1 platform for case and process management on the cloud.

Welcome to the team, Tijs. Looking forward to working with you!