Over on Linkedin, there is a spirited debate over several aspects of the Adaptive Case Management (ACM) movement going on.  The whole thread makes is worthwhile a read if you are trying to understand what exactly ACM is trying accomplish, how the community is organized and who some of big players are.

Hidden inside that polemics and grandstanding is a fascinating gem on the subtle disagreements in the community:

As for the comments on ACM and Dynamic Case Management [(DCM) ...]; there is a lot of confusion and the two terms are overlapping in many people's eyes. However they should not overlap. DCM sets out a sequence of steps to achieve a goal, the dynamic nature is met through business rules which are understood at the time of modelling the process. ACM is much less prescriptive on the sequence of activities but is much more focussed on achieving the end goal, it understands that there are unknowns in the business process which will change and allows for these changes.

I love clear definitions so the transparency of this construction is appealing to me and it is infinitely clearer than Forrester's own definition of DCM:

The Problem

If the primary difference between DCM and ACM is when (and if) the variability is planned and managed.  

ACM doesn't plan for it at all.  Indeed, Max Pucher holds the radical view that risk is created by planning so we should eliminate all planning.  This world view is seductive but difficult to understand.  It's a topic bigger than this post.  I will try to do it justice to in a subsequent post but, basically, even if you could get it to work, I'm pretty skeptical that most organizations (even enlightened ones) that are big enough to invest in the system you created actually want it.

On the other hand, A DCM technology is a workflow that uses business rules to govern variability.  The problem with this definition is that it is largely meaningless.  Put another way, every BPM technology is also a DCM system since I can't easily think of one that doesn't use some sort of rules or decision technology to manage the flow of work.

In a nutshell, there is the challenge and opportunity for the ACM proponents.  How to win wider acceptance when their core proposition is so hard to define?  The rest of the linkedin thread retreads that ground repeatedly.

Closing Thoughts

As I have blogged before, I am not against the ACM movement - I just don't understand it very well despite implementing workflow solutions for a living.  Case Management seems to me to be less of a technology problem and more of a style of implementation.