Language Overview

The Case Management Model and Notation evolved out of the need to help Case Managers and workers to define patterns and repeatable tasks in ad-hoc processes and to be able to develop plans that relied on past experience in the context of individual and highly variable situations such as treating a patient or preparing a legal case.

A Case is a proceeding that endeavors to reach a desired outcome and involves actions that are performed with respect to a subject. Case Management is common in a number of industries and disciplines including legal, medical and financial. The key element of a Case is that the proceeding do not follow a rigid and predetermined plan but rather a plan is developed for each individual Case. For example the treatment plan for patient, who has sustained injuries and presents to the emergency department of a hospital, would depend on the both the current problems, medical history and treatment constraints.  There are many other situations where Cases are used such as search and rescue, prospecting, scientific investigation and more.

The subject of a Case might be a person, a legal action, a business transaction, or a focal point around which actions are taken to achieve an outcome.  When work begins on any individual Case the proceeding could be carried out in a completely ad-hoc manner. As experience grows and similar Cases are resolved over time, patterns emerge and a set of common practices and responses can be defined for managing Cases in a more rigorous and repeatable manner. This becomes the practice of Case Management, and this knowledge can be enshrined in Enterprise Architect in a way that will help Case Managers and Case workers to complete their Cases with positive outcomes.

Design and Execution (run time) phases showing a plan with fixed and discretionary tasks.

A Case has two distinct phases: the design-time phase that results in a model, and the run-time phase that represents the planning and execution of the model. The model is relatively static but  the execution of the model to create a plan happens many times as each individual Case is completed. During the design-time phase, business analysts engage in modeling, which includes defining fixed Tasks that are always part of pre-defined segments in the Case model, and 'discretionary' Tasks that a Case worker might apply at their discretion. In the run-time phase, Case workers execute the plan as defined in the model, but typically the plan will continuously evolve due to a particular situation, event or context, and discretionary items will be added to deal with these circumstances.