The ACM Tweetjam was amazing. It was the first Tweetjam I have attended, and it is really an intense experience. Kudos to Keith Swenson (the driving force behind our Mastering the Unpredictable book and my fellow authors for a really thought provoking two hours. My only gripe was that it was a very technical discussion – we need to get more non-technical folks involved – or I worry that we may go down the same path as BPM – starting out as a tool for business people, but ending up as a tool for IT.

I thought I’d pull out the tweets that were related to defining ACM:
chuckwebster: Could someone please define adaptive case management? … in 132 characters (140 – ” #acmjam”) or less #bpm
I think this is a fair question. I  think before we can get to a technical definition (or a list of relevant technologies) we need a high level definition. I believe that there will multiple technical approaches to the problem – especially since it spans such a wide spectrum of use cases. Here my synopsis of partial answers  to this question from the tweetjam:

ActionBase: ACM is a way provide enough structure to knowledge work to make it manageable, but not so much as to strangle it #acmjam
JoshuaWaldman: @ActionBase I like your point. It’s like poetry. Structure upon which to hang the decision which people make. #acmjam
mishodikov: RT @cmooreforrester: nice RT @JoshuaWaldman: @piewords so it’s a people first approach to processes. I dig it. #acmjam
swensonkeith: @cmooreforrester old case mgmt mainly workflow and a case folder: New, ADAPTIVE CM includes better process and BI #acmjam
neilwd: A thought experiment re: tools reqts etc for #acm – how & where different from project management? #acmjam
juliebhunt: RT @cmooreforrester: #forrester thinks 3 kinds of ACM use cases will emerge: investigations, incident mgmt & service requests #acmjam #bpm #emc
ActionBase: @passion4process ACM is the way to manage the intelligent anarchy that is knowledge work #acmjam
frankkraft: RT @passion4process: We moved from top-down BPR, to collaborative BPM, to controlled anarchy ACM… #acmjam .. controlled anarchy!!
cmooreforrester: I think it’s about organizing chaos & letting smart people add value RT @charoy: #acmjam is it about organising chaos or controling chaos?
maxjpucher: @passion4process ACM is not anarchy – iit is EMPOWERMENT! Authority, Gaols and Means! Social is not empowerment! #acmjam
SingularityBPM: managing the unpredictable! http://bit.ly/abtnmD RT @cmooreforrester: it’s abt organizing chaos, letting smart ppl add value #acmjam @charoy
SingularityBPM: ACM is for knowledge workers what process automation was for task workers RT @cmooreforrester: … case benefits r hard to quantify #acmjam

This turned out longer list than I expected. As you can see it was a very dynamic interchange. One overarching theme that didn’t come out from these direct tweets is that ACM is for managing knowledge work. I’ll address that in another post.