It's Time for the Intelligent Internet of Autonomous Things

In a recent post I outlined the relationship between IoT and processes for desirable outcomes. To optimize that relationship, the IoT will have to become smarter and more independent plus processes will have to relinquish some centralized control. The dominate approach is leveraging the IoT as a process assist, but there are other ways to have this pairing operates.

See http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2014/07/internet-of-things-and-process-yields.html 

IoT as the Assistant:

The IoT can assist processes by providing functional support of tasks that a process delegates to the IoT, usually in a form of an task focused agent/thing. In this approach the process or case milestones are in control and the IoT assists the process to accomplish it's targeted outcomes. The process is aware of the agent/thing and orchestrates and controls it and it's effects and outputs. These agents or things have simple functionality and little intelligence to apply to the task unless the agent is a reasoning person in a IoT inventory.


IoT as the Intelligent Assistant:

As in the IoT as the Assistant, the control of the process or case is outside the agent, but now the agent can handle more than simple tasks. The IoT, through agents/things, can add significant knowledge or the power of analysis or even deductions for decisions to guide the controlling process in new paths and outcomes. It's not unimaginable to have thousands of smart boards, knowledge focused Watson like agents and specialized stringers available as process assists for complex tasks. These tasks could include watching context for the process, such as markets, rules, literature, news, possible scenarios and emerging behavior.


IoT as the Collaborative Manager:

As these agents/things become more intelligent, goal driven, and networked for common results, they may dynamically collaborate and invoke processes, portions of processes(snippets), cases or milestones to manage the outcomes independent of central control. While governance constraints will have to be established, networks of things will be able to deal with emerging conditions and actions, decide a course of action and take appropriate steps to create desirable results within these constraints. These constraints could be associated with expected and unexpected scenarios and inventoried for guidance and governance.

Net: Net:

The IoT and processes are a strong combination and as the IoT gets more intelligent and autonomous the shift of control will happen to more distributed away from the central controlling process. My expectations would be that over time a hybrid approach will emerge.

Reference Reading:

http://www.aonetwork.com/blogs/Rules-versus-Reason-the-Internet-Things-and-Human-Experts
http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/09/harnessing-business-complexity-with.html

My Contribution to "Art Takes Times Square"

In 2012, I was lucky enough to have one image selected for "Art Takes Times Square" and I was thrilled to have one of my paintings selected. The image also ended up in a coffee table book with other wonderful artists.

This year, I had 13 images shown and I finally have visual proof that 2 of them were shown in full splendor. I am so thankful to SeeMe for the selections and posting these pictures of the SeeMe Take Over of Times Square.

SeeMe has also given me the ability to put many of my images on high quality T shirts, so others can display some of my better works on themselves. All this on the same day I had to say a final good bye to the best artist in my family, Andrew James Sinur. RIP, my son.  I sure hope the Disney Film he worked on does very well this November.

Internet Of Things and Process Yields Big Dividends Together

Combining the Internet of  Things (IoT) with process will be a big deal throughout the next 5 years or more. I have already seen the benefit of the combination of the two of these, even in early days (see the two case studies highlighted below). The obvious use of IoT and BPM is in the traditional sense and respond design pattern, but there is more to the Process of Every Thing (PET). The IoT has three basic interactions with process.

Incoming Signals and Patterns:

Processes can act on any signal or patterns either through internal or external complex event processing (CEP) technologies. Right now, the number of signals and patterns that processes have to deal with are pretty low in number today, but the prognosticators are predicting at least an order of magnitude in the number of incoming signals and patterns. This is the traditional sense and respond design pattern, which is reactive in nature.

Outgoing Signals: 

Processes can direct or orchestrate various varieties of resources from machines to people. Also smart processes can run predictive analytics to send out signals to any of these resources that can act independently or in collaboration with other resources. In this pattern the process is the proactive initiator of the need for resources to respond.

Interactive Behavior:

In the situation of interactive behavior the process can sense or emit signals interactively. In advanced situations resources can collaborate in a machine to machine (M2M) fashion, a human to human fashion (H2H), a human to machine fashion (H2M) or a machine to human fashion (M2H). all of these styles can interact with each other to accomplish business outcomes.

Net:; Net:

The type and amount of intelligent business operations that can be created by the combination of process and the internet of things is now being expanded. This is one of the key new enablers in the digital organizations tool box to optimize operations and raise more revenue.

See http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-top-10-behaviors-of-winning.html


Case Studies:

http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/07/smart-farm-operations-processes.html
http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/2013/05/smart-medical-process-rated-on-cpiq.html

My Art in Times Square Again: Don't Miss It

I was just notified that 13 of my images will be shown in Times Square this coming Thursday.  Please see the flyer below. If you happen to be in New York and see them, let me know !!

God Now Has One of His Gems Back

Last week, my oldest son Andy died suddenly and we still don't know why  (The LA Corner is investigating). I just had to post something to share how special he truly was to all of us. Andy embraced every one of  his roles with love, humor and commitment. He had terrific people skills and will be greatly missed by his children, wife, friends and extended family. Andy was loved by all for his caring, humor and wisdom. Some of my best memories of Andy always involved fun as he was the epicenter of great times.


A Phenomenal Family Man: 

Andy was so committed to his family and loved them greatly. He had his priorities on point.

A Fantastic Son:

We had such special times together fishing, working on art, playing racquetball and going on eating adventures.

A Dedicated Worker:

Andy was so proud of landing his dream job at Disney and pleasing the audiences with his projects. He started as an animator working in the gaming industry, creating special effects for films, doing motion capture, voice synchronization, project leading and supervision. He was thrilled to work on Frozen and was really enjoying his role on Big Hero 6 coming out in November 2014.

A Terrific Brother:

Andy was such a responsible and fun brother. He was like a third parent while the family grew up and he continued his role as advisory role for many kids in their adult lives.

A Best Friend and True Goof:

 Andy was always the life of the party and fun to be with for everybody. He always had time for everyone and listened very well.

Thanks for reading this and letting me ramble on about the true gem that Andy has always been. I just hope God enjoys him as much as we did.  He was such a joy and I will always miss him.


Memorial Service to Celebrate Andy's Life:  :) 

July 26th 2014 at 11:00 AM
Faith Bible Church
17230 N 59th Ave
Glendale, AZ 85308
602 368 7100

Will Case Management Dominate End to End Processes?

It's pretty much a given that large scoped, end to end, processes will contain a mixed set of process styles, but it is not clear what style will dominate. Will it be case management as the controlling style or will it be a typical flow. We know that both kinds of processes have a start and a stop, but how they get from one to the other is quite different. The Case approach follows a string of milestone goals, with little concern for the sequence of steps to the reach each milestone. The traditional flow has pre-planned paths and sequence implied in them. So why would one dominate the other?

Where Case Should Dominate:

Case should be the dominate style, with bits of leveraged planned flows or snippets, when the basic goals around investigation and collaboration to obtain  high quality and consensus outcomes. The further away a process is from best and tightened downed practice, the more case makes sense. Over time certain bits of the interaction can be made into min-flows (snippets), but investigative processes are generally dominated by case.

Where Planned Flows Should Dominate:

Flows should be the dominate style, with bits of collaboration, when the basic goals are around speed and efficiency. The further away a process is from evolving and emergent behavior, the more planned flows make sense. As things become more fuzzy and judgement intense, case and collaboration can be interjected, but value and supply chains are generally dominated by flow.

Net; Net: 

You will hear process pundits argue that one style should dominate the other, but I would submit there are proper dominate styles for different kind of work patterns.

Understanding Case Management Styles for Business Results

Business results can be enhanced by understanding the different styles of case management and where to apply them. Better yet understanding that the styles can be used in combination for optimal outcomes. If fact case styles can be combined with traditional modeled process snippets or master flows for value / supply chains. I have identified and used three types of styles in the past and they have helped me craft better end to end processes. Any of these styles support emerging or unstructured process flows to some degree in that sequencing is influenced by milestones more than step sequences.

Content Driven Case Management:

This style of case management revolves around the first mile of content capture and verification. Advanced uses of this style can present various forms of content (forms, images, voice & video) to a group of collaborative data entry or case handlers or processors. There are fixed milestones to attain for completion. There is significant benefit in getting the content correct the first time and there are a number of vendors who focus on this style of case management.

Knowledge Collaboration Case Management:

This style of case management is about resolving a case leveraging multiple skill-sets or multiple knowledge worlds usually represented by many collaborative knowledge workers. Advanced knowledge collaboration will consider the skills necessary to complete the case and involve the proper skills and knowledge in an optimal fashion. Again there are fixed milestones involved with this type of case management. The benefit of solving complex cases leveraging the right skills and knowledge is huge for a number of business and public sector cases.

Adaptive Case Management (ACM):

ACM is an advanced form of case management that allows for dynamic milestones, unlike the other two styles above. ACM is for truly emergent processes that are being crafted on the fly from beginning to end. Activities and steps swarm around changing conditions and support the highest degree of unstructured work patterns. These patterns can be later analyzed for better practices and more predictable milestones. ACM is the latest style to emerge out of business process management and the number of vendors that support this style are few.

Net; Net: 

As organizations try to assist or automate work streams, multiple styles of case come in handy as tools in the process & case tool box. It is rare today to have only one style of case and process type and it is even rarer to find one vendor that can support all styles, but it's is happening in ACM and other intelligent business process management systems.

Happy Birthday USA

It is great to celebrate another birthday of our great country. While there is plenty to complain about (inept politicians, too litigious in nature, too politically correct, high pace, Hollywood morals and taxes everywhere), we have the freedom to complain about it and still go about our business. Our country gives us many safety nets (unwanted or not), but frustrates us with pace and debate.

Washington DC seems a city that just "grinds water". They charge us for both the water and the grinding of it. As you may have guessed, grinding water does nothing for it, but it seems like there is some activity at least. I'm still glad for the privilege to live here where the spirit of innovation is unstoppable. Some want to escape it and life itself, but they are wrong in my mind. The US is not perfect, but it's a great place to strive for perfection through teamwork.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COUNTRY OF MINE !

Blog Activity for 2Q 2014

There has been a shift in interest in the 2nd quarter towards new topics. In the 1st quarter, the topics were around practices and skills necessary to compete as a digital organization vying for new customers. The 2nd quarter showed a spike in interest around Case Management and Intelligent processes. Of course there were some water shed events in 2Q. IBM had it's huge Impact Conference in Vegas and Pegasystems had it's exciting Pegaworld where customer success stories dominated. In addition, there was an inaugural conference in DC entitled   "BPM & Case Management Global Summit" that demonstrated a strong interest in adaptive case management. Pictured below are the top 10 Hot Topics on my blog (http://jimsinur.blogspot.com/):

The next 10 Hot Topics are listed below:

If you are interested in the countries that accessed my besides the US, see the below:

If you have any comments or questions, please comment on this blog posting.

Art Projects for the Second Quarter 2014

The second quarter of the year usually is one of the busiest, because of events, but I managed to find some time to create some new fractals. I usually burn the fractals on metal and they really pop. It turns out that hey are my best sellers these days. If you want to see my current portfolio, please see the following:

http://www.james-sinur.com/paintings/
http://www.james-sinur.com/digital-art/

 Here are my latest contributions to my portfolio. Enjoy !!!!!

Mind Blender

Tri-Star 

Light Game

Sleeping Dragon