Automated Guidance for Case Management: Science or Fiction?

Abstract : Humans dream about an intelligent computer assistant who would support them in critical situations thanks to its capacity to reason objectively, to take into ac-count millions of factors and criteria and to value carefully thousands of alterna-tives prior to make a decision. HAL 9000, in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (IMDB 1968), is probably the most famous incarnation of such assistant. Being a fictional character, it reflects a number of great ideas of scientists from the 20th century who believed that machines one day would be capable of doing any work a man can do. Though it was shown that such a vision of computer technology is too optimistic, scientists keep working on theories and prototypes that can sup-port practitioners in agile decision-making and smart process management. In this paper, we propose our vision of what academic research can do for such a pragmatic and experience-driven discipline as Adaptive Case Management and to discuss to what extent fiction may become reality in what we call automated guid-ance for case management?