Short description

The training explains how BPMN 2.0 can be used for these purposes: “documentation”, “specification”, “model execution” and “model driven development”. The goals for modeling are transparency, integration and flexibility.

The model types of BPMN 2.0 and their purpose-driven application will be explained. You will learn how to use the right modeling elements for the right purpose. You will learn how to assure the quality of the models and how a guideline will support your model creation.

The guideline taught in this training has been proven to achieve short modeling project duration and high customer satisfaction even for difficult modeling tasks. It is based on deep experience in the bpm modeling space and in bpm mentoring.

The training will be in german.

Audience

The training is ideally suited to give you a start in BPMN 2.0 and to have an overview afterwards.

Day 2 is also suited very well for those who already know BPMN 1.x and to learn the new modeling possibilities with BPMN 2.0.

For project leads, members of a modeling project, business process architects, director business process management, business architects, system architects, SOA architects, quality managers.

Dates

Registration and Details

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/SEM-BPMN

He argues, that taylorism is good, because it makes work effective, predictive and scalable – which are in essence the same arguments that Taylor himself brought up – that´s why it is called “Taylorism”.

My answer to this is: It depends. Taylorism is not a good thing per se nor a bad thing per se. It is a good tool if it is used for the right purpose but it is a bad tool, if it is used for the wrong purpose. Take for example physical production of goods – cars, machines and jewelry for example. The production of these typically follow different production types. Cars are typically produced with the production type of line production (Linienfertigung) (this is where all the “Toyota production system” and “Lean Production” ideas come from). Machines are typically produced in job shop production (Werkstattfertigung) and jewelry is typically produced in manufacturing production (Manufakturfertigung). All of these production types follow different rules and management principles. The key is to use the right tool for the right type of product. It is not right to conclude from the fact that line production is good for cars that it is good for jewelry as well.

Now in the area of business process management we are talking in most part about intellectual work or brain work – not so much about physical production. We cannot conclude that if a management style is good for physical production that it is good for brain work as well. Also within brain work we have different types of work that require different styles of work. We cannot conclude that if a work style is good for one kind of brain work, that it is good for the other as well. We need to differentiate.

Yes, the discussions about Adaptive Case Management versus classical Business Process Management are sometimes heated – but I think this is fine. Sometimes it may sound like: “ACM is the only thing” – no – “BPM is the only thing”. Both is not true. It depends. So far we only had BPM and no ACM. So far we tend to see every problem as a nail because we only had a hammer. No – BPM is not the answer to every process management problem; especially not for knowledge work. So far there was no other solution. Now we have ACM – the new kid in town. Now we have more tools available and we are able to address more types of processes that we were able to address before.

BPM itself is a technology to make processes more flexible than – standard software. So BPM is more flexible than standard software and ACM is more flexible than BPM. We need all of the three. No one claims that we do not need standard software in the future. Nor anyone claims that we do not need BPM in the future – at least no one I know. But yes – we claim that we also need ACM in the future. It depends on the type of work. Knowledge work is clearly ACM. But there will also and in the future a lot of routine work that is best done by BPM or by standard software. In routine work effectiveness, predictiveness and scalability are the main attributes. But in knowledge work it is not. In Knowledge work problem solution, creativity and flexibility and goal achievement are the main attributes. These contradict with effectiveness, predictiveness and scalability to some degree. There are always work types that are kind of “in the middle”. For example customer problem processing. Who is more effective? The worker that solves 5 very easy customer problems per hour; or the one that solves a very difficult customer problem in three days? See – it is just wrong to measure work only by throughput.

So my claim is: The right type of tool for the right type of work.

It also depends on the degree of process maturity. If a process is immature – and we always have immature processes if we have innovation – then it is less predictable than a process that is mature. If it is a mature process, it is predictable and scalable.

This is why mature processes can be implemented in ERP Systems, half-mature processes can be modeled with workflow and immature processes cannot. However – now they can be managed by using ACM. In my view it is obvious that there are far more immature processes than there are mature processes. A typical employee has far more emails in his inbox than workflow items. Most of the emails represent knowledge worker processes – processes for ACM.

And – what we need is a “process funnel” – as I tried to depict in the diagram. That is – a process that today is a completely unmanaged process (only by email) should become an ACM managed process. After a while – if it is a mature process – it can become a BPM managed process (for example by exporting it from an ACM system and importing it into a BPM system). After a while – if the process has further matured – it may become part of an ERP system. This approach has the advantage that each step is easier than doing the whole thing from scratch. And only proven processes become part of the mature process landscape. But even then there will be new more unpredictable processes – and that is a good thing. Because they spawn creativity, challenge, competition, achievement and all things that make life interesting and companies flourishing.

An important aspect to this is, that the seamless integration best works if all of those levels follow some basic rules, that I call rules of adaptive processes (that covers more than just adaptive case management). I work to promote the concept of adaptive processes that is a holistic approach to the whole process landscape – be they standard processes, workflows or adaptive case processes – and makes all levels fit to each other.

It is not possible to map behavior.

Assume there is a given system landscape of different business systems each fulfilling a part of the business processes. Now assume the goal is to model a common layer of services around these systems, a SOA layer, and to map this layer back to the different business systems. The purpose is to allow flexibility in the underlying system landscape, because the SOA layer remains stable, even if underlying systems change.

I wrote about this already here.

The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is designated to fulfill the mapping job. This – often – is a naïve assumption. Why?

What is an Enterprise Service Bus able to do? It can route and transform messages (if we omit the discussion of technical adapters that is irrelevant for now). This is not very much. Message transformation is not enough for mapping the process logic of different application systems. Yes – they can map interfaces from one format to the next – if the mapping is easy. Even if we start to discuss structural transformations and key mapping it is not so easy – but I want to omit this discussion as well.

The point I want to make is about behavior. What is behavior? Behavior is the contract that a service provides to service clients with regards to the messages that it is able to receive or send depending on the state of the business process that the service offers. A service contract that only defines the signature of service operations (WSDL) is too less to understand a service. It is necessary to know if it is possible to send an order cancellation after an order confirmation has been sent from the supplier to the customer or if it is not possible. It is necessary to know if it is possible to send two purchasing change requests in a row, even before the first purchasing change request has been answered or if it is not possible. This is a contract that a service offers to its clients – and it has to be defined. This is behavior. A means to define such a behavioral contract is the BPMN 2.0 choreography and interaction modeling for example.

So – now – if one participant – the customer – of the interaction is able to send a cancellation of an order after the order has been confirmed, but the other participant – the supplier – is not able to process such a cancellation request, then there is no way to make this scenario work by mapping. What should an Enterprise Service Bus do in such a situation? The Enterprise Service Bus certainly does not solve the problem.

So – how can the problem be solved? The only way is to agree on the contract before the business system(s) that should interact are purchased or developed – or to be lucky and thus be able to configure each of the business systems to comply to a contract that is defined afterwards. But good planning is always better than hope to be lucky.

How can this planning be done? Use BPMN 2.0 choreography and interaction modeling.

1. The Web Service Operations that are the interface to the application must be described as WSDL.
2. Technical Means must be available to connect the application to an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
3. WSDL is not enough, because it only describes the signature of the service interface. What is also needed is a model of the service behavior. The allowed sequence to call service operations must be modeled as business process model (for example BPMN 2.0 choreography diagram). For example it must be modeled if or if not it is possible to cancel an order after it has been released or not. This is not visible in the WSDL signature, but can only be visible within a service behavior model. And it is decisive to integrate.
4. The application should not be monolithic, but decomposed into components that represent individual process participants that communicate with each other in a loosely coupled way.
5. The granularity of the service operations must represent real reuse. This means, that the service operations may only do one thing at a time and not a chain or sequence of many activities. This is necessary to compose the service operations to new composed services. For example it must be a different step to create an order and to release it.
6. Extension Points must be modeled. Extension points are those points in an application process where extenders are allowed to attach an individual process. For example it might be possible to add additional an approval to a purchasing process. This must be modeled. Also integrity conditions must be modeled. For example it is necessary to have exactly one purchase order for individual purchase order confirmations. This is an integrity condition that must be modeled.
7. It must be possible to define new business objects or extensions to existing business objects.
8. All of this model information must be available in a repository.

This is my requirement list for a SOA enabled application. Yes, I admit, these are many requirements and I do not know one single software package that does fulfill them all. I know software packages that come close. I would not buy any software that falls short of many of these points.

I think most would say, that 1 and 2 is sufficient. I wouldn’t. I think that 3 till 8 is also necessary to make a SOA integration project successful. This knowledge often is only available through the individual knowledge of consultants. But there is no reason to not model it and thus make a SOA project much more economic.

Yesterday I was invited to speak at the BPM | SOA Integration Days, a conference that I really liked very much. My talk was about Adaptive Case Management and how it can improve the work of the knowledge worker – actually we had a whole afternoon about Adaptive Case Management. I also met Max J. Pucher who delivered a keynote. Hajo Normann also talked about the repetitive nature of predesigned forms and screens and how it quenches creativity.

At the end of the day there was a very interesting speaker panel discussion about SOA and about the question if SOA is dead or not. Does it add value? Is it too risky? Does a BPM model help or does it lead into a dead end, because it becomes too complex?

I did not join the discussion because I had to digest what I heard from the panel. But two points became important to me after thinking about what was said, that I want to share.

The first point is what I wrote about in Dead or Alive! Exactly the same discussion arose in the panel only with a little more pessimistic undertone. It seemed like doing the BPM model first before starting the SOA was a bad idea, because it inevitably ends up in complex unusable models and a long project. I was surprised by so much provocation, and part of it certainly was only rhetorical. But it underlined, that what I discussed in Dead or Alive! is very relevant. Also it seems to be some kind of gambling, if you get the BPM modeling project to be successful or not. What the “Adaptive Process” strives for is a guideline that will ensure process models that serve the purpose that is defined and be flexible enough for necessary changes. Not too complex, but enough detail for the purpose defined – in this case for the purpose of specifying SOA. I am convinced that it is possible to have such a guideline and the guideline that I am using in my projects so far works very well to serve the purpose. In the future I want to contribute some of these concepts to the discussion.

The second point I had to think more about. It was obvious in the discussion that it is hard to justify a SOA project within a company, because the big risk and the investment often is not outbalanced by quantifiable returns. One return surely is the reuse of components that is then possible and defined process exit and entry points – and therefore more flexibility. Another promise of SOA is, that it is possible to exchange underlying software components without too much impact on the whole landscape. The latter one I deem to be quite unrealistic. It only works if the new software basically does the same thing as the old software – which is very improbable in my eyes – and not a good case to buy a new one. So the main benefit is the re-use aspect. Now – considering this, I cannot understand, why the duty to do SOA is not more loaded onto the software vendors. I cannot understand, why a company does SOA all on their own. I would expect the software vendor to provide a software package SOA enabled and I would only buy it if it is. I would not do SOA without buying new SOA enabled software. Following this principle, the re-use aspect is much higher, because it is multiplied by the number of customers my software vendor has – and thus much more economical – also for me – because I am only paying a fraction of the whole SOA effort. I would only concentrate on interweaving SOA enabled components for my specific purposes – I think this is enough of a challenge.

Those were my personal thoughts following the very interesting panel discussion.

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/BPMNexpress

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/BPMNdelta

http://www.adapro.eu/site/seminar/BPMNfuture

The language of the seminars is german.

Economic circumstances seem to change quite fast; people ask themselves if BPM is part of the solution or part of the problem.

I for my part had to struggle with the thought of: “Why are there so many changes, so much reorganization, and so much instability in goals?” Sometimes, if you worked very hard to achieve a goal, only to find in the end, that circumstances have changed, this can be very frustrating. And yes, to a certain degree stability is a prerequisite for success, because only then you can build up competency that is needed for success.

However, instead of lamenting I thought: Why not make a virtue of necessity? The change is there, it comes from the market, and it also makes sense, otherwise there is no progress. It is not about trying to keep the circumstances stable, but it is about adaptation to the circumstances – if necessary.

Of course, this basic idea brings you to BPM modeling at all. Why model at all? Why not hard code software and write prose for work instructions? The answer is: Hopefully if we have the model, we can change it faster and then we can change the organizational processes and the software faster, if necessary. And yes, it is true. If you have that model, and it is available in a tool where you have all the links, references and also descriptions, if you have a “living model” then you can adapt it faster – together with software and organizational processes. This is essentially true.

If we even have model driven development or model execution, then this change cycle is even faster. But it presupposes an investment in model driven technology that most have not done. And many have failed trying, because it requires mastery of the subject and it requires an overall strategy. It is possible, but difficult. This is my observation.

Still I thought: Something is missing. Something that is really very adaptive. A tool for a process that can be changed while is running. This idea caught me and I was not able to forget it. If we had such a tool, I thought, then processes could be adapted by those people that execute the processes. This is incredibly powerful, I thought. Because they are the people that know best, how the process should work.

I made the experience, even when standardized processes were tool – supported, then people got notifications, the processes speeded up by orders of magnitude. If any of you had an Excel-Controlled process and then you tool-supported it, they you know what I mean. It is just much faster. However every change in the process needed the developer to help – in this case.

So – if I can combine the one with the other, the flexibility of Excel with the notifications of the tool-supported process, then, I thought, this must be a powerful tool. And I started to build it as cloud-based software from scratch.

Then I found out, that process experts all over the world have similar thoughts. We met, we wrote two books – you know the story. Now it is called “Adaptive Case Management”.

Back to the question what the future of BPM is. My personal opinion is that Adaptability will win over so-called Efficiency. More and more processes and process models will be judged by the question: “How adaptive is this process?” – more than “How efficient is this process?”. Efficiency still is important, but Adaptability will be more dominant in the future, because there is nothing more futile than to do the wrong thing very efficiently.

And – alas! – so many processes and process models today are very far from being good adaptive processes and models. So there is much to do! The best process experts we can find will be needed to make standard processes more adaptive. But it will pay off – because those companies that are more adaptive will win the competition.

What can I recommend to you? Start thinking about it! Ask yourself the question, what can I do to make this process more adaptive? What are the characteristics of an adaptive process? Where do I want adaptability, where do I not want it? Which circumstances might change and which effect does this have on the process?

The more we start to think about these questions, the better we will be equipped for the future.

Maybe in the future we will call it APM – Adaptive Process Management – or ABPM – Adaptive Business Process Management.

I want to share three observations about how in observe the market with regards to Adaptive Processes.

Today I attended a presentation about “Process oriented knowledge management”. It is a German research institute and a small German software company. They showed their concept and software, including an industry project.

What they do is they link knowledge objects, which can be files, wikis, … to process activities. They have a reduced set of process modeling elements compared to BPMN. Their software is offered as SaaS. The industry project manages end-of-life events of a product processes including notifications of the customers, alternative proposals and due date management.

I think it is exactly the right approach to link knowledge objects to activities. Because that is what is actually needed for an activity. I asked if they link it to the process model or the process instance. They link it to the process model and work to link it to the process instance – which of course will be necessary in knowledge work.

I also liked the reduced set of modeling elements. However to my regret I must say they – in my opinion – chose the wrong subset. In my view that is because they did not deeply understand the general laws by which all processes work before choosing their subset. That is a pity. Also they did not overcome the chasm between modeling and execution of processes, which is the most basic foundation of adaptive case management. In my view that is because they did not understand the nature of knowledge work as such – the unpredictable and unique process or workstream. Now the tool has been built for this architecture and most probably these basic architectural principles cannot be changed later on.

As if I knew it before the industry projects result was, that the tool can only be used for standard processes where workers are exchangeable. It cannot be used for knowledge intensive processes like engineering work. Surprise! The industry project lead said “no quantum leap”.

It is a pity.

There is a demand, but even millions of research budget cannot solve it. The most important prerequisite is a basic understanding about the nature of processes in general and about the nature of knowledge work in specific. There is more to say about it, but space it short.

The second observation is about Salesforce.com Chatter. It is sold as the social tool for the company. I had quite high expectations from advertisement. However it turns out to be a facebook style event stream – that’s it – as far as I can say. Ok – that is a good idea. And yes, there is definitely a value add over facebook by being able to subscribe to changes of business objects (Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, Products, …) as a general concept. But I still remember that Google wave failed, because no one could handle the event stream (waves) in the end, lost the overview, lost the structure. It is a plus, that there is a link to a business object in these events, and the business object has a clear status. This is better than Google wave, that did not have business objects with a status. But I can’t see how the Chatter event stream can serve to manage unpredictable processes, since they themselves have no status and there is no notion of process performance, process analytics. Where is the case – the workstream? An event stream is no workstream.

Notwithstanding the event stream is a good idea.

I saw this event stream also with the cloud process management software from Appian. That’s what they have new in their Appian 6 – “BPM just got better” – “Social BPM”. Probably many are excited about it. I am not. I must say in general I like Appian very much. So don’t misunderstand. I like this BPM in the cloud – direct modeling and execution. But just having a facebook style event stream is not quite enough in my eyes. Appian has the BPMN style way of modeling, which is in contradiction to the way knowledge worker processes work. However I don’t want to be too dogmatic about it – for many processes – standard processes – BPMN works very well. And for those a facebook style event stream is a plus. But does that make it adaptive? No. Does it have to be adaptive to be social? Not necessarily. Only if you want to address the ever growing number of knowledge workers, knowledge work / creative work.

I am struggling to make the critique concrete enough. What is needed is an objective list of criteria that process software has to fulfill if it can be called “Adaptive”. So we need the patterns of knowledge work and by them we can judge any software XYZ if it performs well in the category. All of this is not yet established, but we need it.

All I wanted to do today is to share what I observed in the market with relation to Adaptive Processes.

I want to give a quick overview over what I presented at BPMN 2010 Conference in Potsdam. This overview diagram shows, what AdaPro, my company, offers.

At the bottom there are “AdaPro Seminare” which means training. They serve the purpose to understand existing processes. Then – the columns in the middle represent the core value of AdaPro Mentoring for the modeling of business processes, namely individual coaching, patterns and quality assurance. The top – the roof – is about Adaptive Case Management – Processes for knowledge workers. All of that together is a holistic approach, guided by the concept of adaptive processes.

1. AdaPro Training

Is it just another training about BPM or BPMN? No! Certainly not. Classical training typically begins with a certain modeling method like BPMN or UML or EPC, and is focused around it. It trains which modeling elements there are and what they mean plus some examples. And that is good. But then in day-to-day modeling, how do you use it? How do you solve certain problems? Which modeling elements do you use, which don’t you use? This is classical training. But AdaPro training targets at a deeper understanding of how business processes work. There are some fundamental truths about business processes that are not taught anywhere as far as I know. These fundamental truths will become your compass in the journey of process modeling – be it with BPMN or with other means. They will help you to use only a minimal set of modeling elements and enable you to reach far more than is common practice. In this training we will look at common modeling problems and at solution patterns for these modeling problems. BPMN 2.0 will be used where possible, and actually BPMN 2.0 contains some excellent concepts, that will help us do the job.

1. AdaPro Mentoring

In day-to-day modeling one had basically two options so far:

• Do it all by yourself – and if you do now know how to solve a modeling problem browse in Google, Forums, Communities or
• Book a consultant to basically do it for you.

Both methods have disadvantages. Now mentoring offers a third option. Mentoring is sustainable support with modeling business processes – typically over a longer period of time. It is not as expensive as consulting, but much more effective than trying to solve all modeling problems alone. This is done by weekly Webinars, monthly Workshops and individual support as needed. Furthermore there is a library of solution patterns available for the clients of mentoring. The third component is quality assurance – provided by a review process. All of that works together to build up excellent expertise in the client company and project, that is sustainable even after the project. That is very important in the light of the fact, that process modeling is not a once and for all activity, but in times of ongoing process adaptations it is also an ongoing process.

1. AdaPro Case Management

This new area is the area I describe in the book “Mastering the Unpredictable”. It is process management of a new kind. It is less modeling and more process execution. Even individual processes can be executed with that concept. That opens new doors and applications areas for process management that were closed until today, especially in the area of knowledge work. So AdaPro Case Management offers the solution for highly flexible processes, if you need it. AdaPro offers Case Studies for your application area including prototyping of software and consulting.

All of these areas work together. Trainings (“Seminare”) build up knowledge that is needed in Mentoring, Mentoring completes that offering and ensures a sustainable impact of process modeling and process management for the company. The concepts, that are taught in the trainings and in Mentoring lay the foundation for an integrated approach to Adaptive Processes. AdaPro Case Management at the top stands in it’s own right. AdaPro Case Management can be used without any preconditions – just start now with it. But it unfolds it’s full potential, if it is integrated with an adaptive approach to process modeling also in the other areas of process management.

Simply said: You can have standard processes – modeled. Or you can have adaptive case management – flexible. Or you can have both – working together – the standard processes with the flexible processes. That is the art of Adaptive Processes.

And that is what AdaPro offers. Please don’t hesitate to call or send an email, if you have further questions about this.

The leading question is how to improve knowledge work productivity. And that is the right question. It is not about how BPM and ACM differ or fit together, because these are technology questions. And technology obviously is only means to an end, which in this case is knowledge work productivity.

The first speaker is Keith Harrison-Broninski.

He starts by mentioning as he calls it “mixed blessings” of using BPM – which is based on scientific management – which is basically working at a virtual assembly line. The core assumption is, that work is transforming input into output. But that does not apply to creative work. He shows the antagonism between task based processes and information based processes. Task based processes serve ease of control, but they suffer for lack of agility, which is represented for example in ERP systems.

Then he talks about “Big Processes”, and how they could be modeled with Teams, Roles, Deliverables, Stages, and a way to interact. Planning will be done during process execution.

However I do not understand why he does refer to this type of process als “Big Process”. For me he is speaking about a Case of Adaptive Case Management. Is this another term for the same thing?

There are 4 types in his view:

1. Overarching process: Bring Order into chaos by putting it all on the table and interact and plan. Also he mentions Goal Oriented Design in this context.
2. Underpinning Process: Processes for Customer service planning across multiple departments. Flowcharts are too technical and rules too complex.
3. Connecting Process: I think he means integrating a Team that uses different technology into one common technology. This in my eyes is a prerequisite, not a process.
4. Remembering Process: As an example a patient process: diagnosis and treatment. Binding together the information from all parts of the big process into a patient case improves the quality of diagnosis and treatment.

While I support the idea to identify knowledge work patterns, I think this classification is only a starting point for discussion. Probably they are not disjoint, or they are to some degree independent. But I support the effort to identify knowledge work patterns. In the end they are needed to provide ACM software. I wrote about this earlier.

Now the speakers are Keith Swenson, Jakob Ukleson and Dana Khoyi, who are also co-authors of “Mastering the Unpredictable“. Keith explains the characteristics of unpredictable processes again. The question is: How do I identify, if I have a need for ACM. Jacob sais, if there are a lot of processes that go on in a lot of documents, spreadsheets, emails, that is a strong sign that ACM fits. Dana mentions, that every kind of work, where people decide what to do next before it is done, is a fit. That is probably the most general and inclusive definition I have heard. However strictly spoken also in predictable processes people decide what to do next for example which product items go into a quote for a prospect. So probably the definition should be: “Every kind of work, where people decide what to do next before it is done, and it is not covered by a standard process”. Which by the way may change over time as some processes become standard processes over time.

Keith talks about who would bring the ACM concept into companies. It is about the “mentor”. He mentions

1. Managers mentoring their people and
2. Specific ACM mentors that support the organization to become more effective with ACM.

So yes – this is a good summary of what I described in Mentoring in Knowledge Work. I think and I hope the discussion about it picking up speed.

Now the question is which type of people would mentor. Those who would care about work efficiency, technology, and are knowledgeable in their profession.

Now they are coming back to the 4 process types / work patterns mentioned in the beginning.

Which is the low hanging fruit? Keith H.-B. sais type 1: Overarching Process. For these reasons:

1. It is directly a benefit for the Customer.
2. It has big visibility in the company.
3. It is probably easier to get budget for it.
4. A productivity increas has a big leverage.

Question: “Are there existing customer examples?” Some examples are mentioned. Local government. Dangered Species in Arizona. Resolving Credit Card issues.

Managing the board of directors meeting. Decisions start and kick off unpredictable processes, they need to be executed and reported back after some time. Regulatory requirements are that you show that you act and what you do. For that ACM is very good.

Keith S. mentions Dr. House, a fictional TV series … as the work progresses, the case moves forward, new decisions are made.

Keith H.-P. mentions complex processes in engineering where tests need to be passed and all parts are put together. I think he might have my chapter “Improving Knowledge Work” in mind, where I describe the case of Leona in much detail, who is working in a telephone system engineering company.

I might also add an own example here: Car Repair. This is not a ficitional example, but a real project. In the beginning there the need for an accident case. It is the central point to coordinate unpredictable parts of the process and predictable parts of the process. I argued in my chapter, that unpredictable parts of the process and predictable parts must be integrated – not everybody believed me or believes me until now. Some say, that it is too difficult. But I think the Car Repair example shows that this is true and not difficult, if it is done using the right approach to ACM.

So yes, to wrap it up – I think there is a big agreement about the direction of the future of knowledge work, unpredictable processes and the role of ACM among us. Yes, we can discuss about definitions of knowledge work or knowledge workers, but maybe the best way to find out is to successfully complete more projects in the area and to adapt the concepts accordingly. Speaking for myself I think the ACM approach helps me see much clearer in current projects and to go into the right direction from the beginning. The “case” naturally fits into many work environments (health, law, government, service, repair …). And that is so important, that the concepts feel natural and also the work feels natural. So – good discussion!