Abstract:
Public administrations deal with a wide range of investigative and case-related activities. The progress of a case is often driven by the circumstances or events that occur during the case itself and which depend on the knowledge of a team of case workers. The work performed by the case team is knowledge work, and non-traditional process automation techniques are required to support case workers. Based on the lessons learned from recent case management projects at the European Commission, the aim of this research is to identify a case management approach suitable for the domain of trade negotiations, as well as an open source-based technology stack able to support the chosen approach. This thesis will present decision-makers with arguments in favour of adopting an adaptive approach to case management, based on the need for flexibility required by knowledge workers to meet the goals set out for them. Business analysts, which currently largely depend on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) to depict the way work is performed in an organisation, will benefit from the insights presented on business process execution in IT systems, while architects and developers can draw inspiration from the software design patterns and components chosen for the application architecture presented in this thesis, to conduct further research on the execution of emergent processes.
