Case Management: A Review of Modeling Approaches

In 2008 the Object Management Group (OMG) released an RFI on “dynamic business activity modeling”. The need to model case management processes was the primary motivation towards this RFI. Several vendors of business process management systems (BPMS) have expressed interest in standardization of case management modeling. Cordys, a vendor of a BPMS platform, based on service oriented architecture (SOA) technology, is one of them. Cordys is increasingly focusing on and providing support for management and improvement of business operations. This year Cordys will release the next release of its business operations platform, called BOP-4. BOP-4 includes a model-driven case management solution, smoothly integrated with BPMN. Within the OMG, the Government Domain Task Force works on standardization of records management and case files. It is expected that case management standardization will be a joint effort of the Business Modeling and Integration and Government Domain task forces. It is too early to conclude whether, eventually, a new specification will be adopted, next to BPMN, or whether case management modeling capabilities will be incorporated into the next release of BPMN. In a series of two articles the discussion around “case management modeling versus BPMN” will be taken to the broader business process management community.