As a result of doing your due diligence of process discovery, mapping, and simulation, you find yourself ready to automate what you consider to be the “perfect process”. You have designed the process to take into all of the discovered “What If” situations and have built the proper system integrations, notifications and reporting and BI. But have you fully considered your resources, i.e. the people participating in your process? Have you taken into account that people get sick, people go on vacation, and that at periodic times people become overloaded with work? If you have not considered these process resource situations, then you are putting the efficiency and effectiveness of your automated business process at risk.
Each of these resource situations challenge the concept that business processes can properly be mapped and modeled. Because no one has the foresight to see into the future and exactly predict how resource levels will be, it is important that your business processes adapt to changing resource situations. Adaptive processes are more than just being flexible in process execution. Adaptive processes understand real-time resource constraints and make run-time decisions to overcome process bottlenecks and roadblocks.
Adaptive processes cater to the following situations:
All in all, no matter how much time and effort is spent in discovering, mapping, and automating a business process, if you have people involved in the process execution, unforeseen situations will occur. While Adaptive BPM Suites provide adaptive functionality in areas other than human resource needs, human-based processes can execute only as quickly as the human themselves. And as we all wear multiple hats in today’s company, it is important that an Adaptive BPM Suite respects dynamic working structures.
Relevant Links:
"Process Automation - Think Outside the Box"
"Dynamic and Flexible Routing in Business Processes: Unstructured Processes"
Chris Adams
VP of Product and Technology
Ultimus