Adaptive Discovery
Adaptive Discovery is a patented technology innovation from Ultimus that allows automated processes to be deployed without requiring complete process maps and definitions.
Instead, process experts define the flow, rules, and recipients of work on the fly, when needed. The process "learns" from these decisions and follows them automatically for future matching cases, without involving the process experts. In this way, processes are defined and enhanced the same way they evolve in business-in response to real world business decisions and requirements.
Equally importantly, once the flows and rules are captured, they can easily be changed by the process experts, either to optimize the process or adapt to new business conditions. This ability to change easily also makes Adaptive Discovery valuable for well-defined processes (where rules are all pre-defined), simplifying the effort to change rules as the business evolves.
Process experts are closely aligned with the business teams-with detailed knowledge of the process, the business environment, and the impact of the flows and rules they are creating.
These individuals may report to the IT organization or to the business unit itself-it doesn't really matter. But their role is clear-they ensure that the process can change and adapt quickly to support unique business needs.
Adaptive Discovery fosters a new level of cooperation between IT and business - one that is consistent with the way both groups should work today:
- IT - "Owns" the infrastructure and develops, deploys and manages the consistent, technical aspects of processes-such as data, forms, and integration. This is similar to traditional application projects and an area of strong expertise for IT professionals.
- Business -"Owns" the process and manages the dynamic business aspects of processes-such as flow, rules, exceptions, and user roles-through process experts.
Adaptive Discovery simplifies the process discovery effort, accelerates deployment and adaptation of processes, and eliminates many of the causes of friction between IT and business users of BPM.
How Adaptive Discovery Works
First and foremost, Adaptive Discovery compresses the scope of the up-front discovery effort. During discovery, the focus of the discovery team-a team that still includes business and IT representatives-is on the well-defined, tangible aspects of a process. Primarily, this involves defining the underlying IT infrastructure and technologies required for process automation:
- Identify all the activities or tasks required in the process.
- Define all data requirements, inputs and outputs.
- Identify integration requirements with existing or new systems.
- Establish user interfaces to support user interactions.
- Establish a high level understanding of the general process goals.
Less time and effort is spent on the more dynamic process details, such as process flows and exception handling. If these details are well understood they can be included up front. If not, then Adaptive Discovery can be used to define them once the process is deployed. With Adaptive Discovery, the process discovery curve does not change, but the point at which implementation can begin does.
By reducing what needs to be defined before implementation, the time and cost of discovery can be dramatically reduced.
Adaptive Discovery also means that details that are needed to handle specific cases will only have to be discovered if and when they are needed. Once these details are discovered, they are remembered by the system. As the system is used more and more, it becomes smarter and smarter, requiring less and less intervention by the process experts. Furthermore, whenever new contingencies arise, the system pro-actively involves the process expert and adapts to the change without requiring additional development by IT in most cases.
If you would like to talk about how you can use Ultimus to improve your business processes then please contact us.