This document discusses case management standards and the Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) standard. It provides an overview of CMMN concepts like the case file, case plan, plan items, and sentries. CMMN aims to standardize how case management systems model dynamic, knowledge-worker driven processes compared to the more rigid flow-based processes in BPMN. The document also shares the presenter's experiences implementing a case management system using Cordys and the benefits of using CMMN for modeling knowledge-worker tasks and optional discretionary tasks.

1. Standards Battle in Daily
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Practice
BPMN and Case Management
Thijs Petter, Hidera

2. Agenda
• Short background on software development
• Experiences with Case Management
• What is CMMN
• Background
• Concepts of CMMN
• Modeling constructs
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

3. Background of Software
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Development
Focus: Business Applications

4. Software Development for Business Applications
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

5. Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Challenges
After development

6. Challenge 1: Upgrading the standard package
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

7. Challenge 2: Integrating the standard package
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

8. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

9. Typical Product Stack
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

10. 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)
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

11. Practical Experiences
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
With Cordys Case Management

12. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

13. Standardization
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

14. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

15. Spec example: Claims Management
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

16. My first CMMN model
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

17. Education Submit & Review
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

18. Initial “Designer”
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

19. CMMN Concepts
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

20. CMMN Pillars
• Runtime Planning
• Constraining choices instead of prescribing
• Guard / Stage / Milestone
• Declarative model
• Including description of entities
• Offering structure to ECA style rules
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

21. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

22. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

23. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

24. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

25. Plan Item Lifecycle – dependent on type
Task & Stage lifecycle
Note: Stage propagates transitions
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Milestone & Event lifecycle

26. Sentry
• Plan Item lifecycle is influenced through Sentries
Entry criterion
Task.Start
• 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”)
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Exit criterion
Task.Exit

27. Sentry Examples
Task A
!
Task B
!
Task A
!
Task B
!
Task C
!
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Task A
!
Task B
!
Task C
!
Milestone A
Task A
!
Task A
!

28. 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
DT1
Task A
• Structured through planning tables at the level of Stage or HumanTask
• Custom filtering through Applicability Rule
• Determines whether the item is “currently” applicable
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
!
Stage A
!
!
Discretionary
Task 1
!
Discretionary
Task 2
!

29. All Decorators
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Planning Table
Exit Criterion
Repeatable
Manual Activation
Expandable
Auto
Completion
Required
Entry
Criterion

30. 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
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera

31. Thank you & questions
Case Management – Thijs Petter, Hidera
Contact details
Thijs Petter
tpetter@hidera.nl
nl.linkedin.com/in/thijspetter