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Distinguish case types

Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes

Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)

Description

One should be cautious of parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of such a sub-process and a lower efficiency. Applying this heuristic may result in faster processing times and less cost.

Especially Berg and Pottjewijd (1997) convincingly warn for parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of this "subflow" and a lower efficiency.

Note that this heuristic is in some sense similar to the triage concept. The main interpretation of the triage concept can be seen as a translation of the case type pattern on a activity level.

Performance considerations

Applying this best practice may yield faster processing times and less cost. Also, distinguishing common subflows of many different flows may yield effciency gains. Yet, it may also result in more coordination problems between the business process (quality) and less possibilities for rearranging the business process as a whole (flexibility).

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Foundational free Patterns

Distinguish case types

Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes

Isolate exceptions

Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow

Consolidate Work

Collect similar work items and work in batches

Green Compensation

Start implementing actions that can offset or counterbalance the environmental effects generated by business processes that cannot be changed.

Automate for environmental impact

Implement automation in a sustainable way

Role-based task assignment

Assign tasks based on resources' roles in the organisation

Constraint-based task assignment

Allocate tasks considering business process execution constraints

Quality-based task assignment

Allocate task based on past feedback or quality metrics

Cost-based task assignment

Delegate tasks according to resource cost

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Connected to

Apply triage

Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities

Assign cases

Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases

Establish a case-based mindset

Remove batch-processing and periodic activities from your business process

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