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What Is Case Management? Definition, Process, and Models
Case management is all about connecting patients with health care providers, designing treatment plans, and making sure it all gets done on time. Learn more about this project-oriented health care profession.
![case management use cases [Featured Image]: A case manager, wearing a blue uniform and a blue head covering, is sitting in front of three computer screens, looking at charts.](https://d3njjcbhbojbot.cloudfront.net/api/utilities/v1/imageproxy/https://images.ctfassets.net/wp1lcwdav1p1/74UCNQZ7eoX2IiTXBfxqlm/22e01be84083d62ce5b73fd342e8c6a1/GettyImages-108436364__1_.jpg?w=1500&h=680&q=60&fit=fill&f=faces&fm=jpg&fl=progressive&auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=1&w=1000&h=)
In health care, case management is a process that connects patients with health care providers, resources, and services. Directed toward ensuring that patients receive the best possible care, case management requires case managers to maneuver different health care systems and collaborate with stakeholders, including patients, medical professionals, and health insurers.
In this article, you will learn more about case management, its process, and explore some different case management models. At the end, you will find more articles and courses you can take to gain a fuller understanding of case management.
What is a case manager?
A case manager is a certified medical professional who connects patients with health care providers, coordinates appointments and treatment plans, and helps patients meet their optimum level of health.
Nurse case managers , for example, are registered nurses (RN) who use their medical expertise to help patients maneuver the health care system and health insurance to receive appropriate care.
What is case management?
Case management is a process that involves numerous stages and requires a unique intersection of health care knowledge and interpersonal skills. In this section, you’ll learn more about what you can expect from the case management process, the skills you’ll need to do it, and find an example of case management in action.
The case management process
Case management is a collaborative process in which a case manager works with clients to ensure they obtain the proper health care in the most cost-effective manner. This is what the process typically looks like:
1. Screening: The case manager reviews a client’s medical records, medical history, and current financial, living, and social support situation to understand client’s needs and current circumstances.
2. Assessment: The case manager conducts more in-depth research and meets with the client to assess their medical condition and circumstances. They might assess the client's health insurance, support systems, and treatment response history.
3. Risk evaluation: In this stage, the case manager evaluates the client's risk for particular ailments. Common factors that are evaluated include existing medical conditions, blood pressure, mental health, and finances.
4. Planning: The planning stage is when a case manager creates a plan of care for their client, which outlines their health objectives, self-care goals, health care options and services, care schedule, and any relevant resources.
5. Implementation: Once a plan has been devised, the case manager now helps the client implement it by guiding them in making sure they attend appointments and educating them about health care-related issues.
6. Follow-up: During the follow-up stage, the case manager sees how the client is progressing through their treatment plan by speaking with them, their health care providers, and their personal support network. If needed, the case manager might advise changing the treatment plan.
7. Evaluating outcomes: Finally, the case manager reviews the entire case and evaluates its outcomes, such as the client's well-being, finances, and whether they received appropriate care.

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Case management skills
Being a case manager requires both technical health care knowledge and strong interpersonal skills. Common skills that case managers should possess include:
Medical knowledge of a wide variety of ailments
Knowledge of the health care system, including different medical professionals, medical organizational structures, and health insurance providers
Project management and coordination
Communication
The ability to collaborate with others
Case management example
An elderly patient who recently suffered a stroke might be assigned a case manager at their hospital to ensure they get the ongoing care they need. In this situation, the case manager would act as a liaison between the patient and their health insurer. They would assess the patient’s current support network, suggest rehabilitation centers, and direct them toward additional resources. Over time, they would monitor the patient’s progress and make sure they attend their medical appointments and take any prescribed medication.

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Case management models
There are three primary case management models used in health care. While they are all oriented toward getting clients the care they need, each has its own unique emphasis. A case manager might use a combination of these models depending on their client’s needs.
Brokerage case management model
The brokerage case management model involves a case manager assessing a client’s need and then acting as a broker that connects them with the relevant resources, services, and medical professionals. Typically, case managers in this system have little personal contact with the client, acting instead as a liaison to ensure they receive the care they need. This model places less emphasis on monitoring outcomes and more on connecting clients with the medical professionals who will.
Clinical case management model
The clinical case management model involves a case manager (often a therapist or counselor ) assigned by a clinical care provider. The case manager works directly with the client in a clinical capacity, providing care as well as coordinating and developing treatment plans. Such direct collaboration can increase the client’s health outcomes and encourage them to follow their care plan more directly.
Strengths-based clinical case management model
The strengths-based clinical case management model is oriented around empowering clients and their support networks so they can meet their health goals. In effect, this model encourages psychological and emotional empowerment by reframing internal narratives and social empowerment by changing environmental factors that could be holding clients back. Though initially developed for those with severe mental health problems, this model can be used for a variety of clients with unique needs.
Learn more about case management
As you plan your future career as a case manager, you might consider taking a flexible, cost-effective online course to gain critical job skills and deeper insight into the patient experience. The University of Houston’s Value-Based Care Specialization introduces course takers to the fundamentals of value-based care, such as the role of case management and the power of effective communication to improve health outcomes for both patients and health care professionals.

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What is a use case? Definition, template, and how to write one
November 8, 2022 5 min read 1621

For requirements collection and high-level stakeholder communication, product managers need to be able to describe how a consumer will interact with a system or product. This can include a description of the product’s users, how they interact with the product, and what it does.
A great way to visually represent this information is by creating a use case.
In this guide, we’ll define what a use case is, describe the elements therein and what they are designed to do, and walk through how to build a use case step by step.
We’ll also look at some use case examples to show what they look like in practice.
If you’d like to write your own use case while following along with this article, here is a free use case template . To use the template, select File > Make a copy from the top menu bar.
Table of a contents
What is a use case, who creates use cases, what is a use case designed to do, preconditions, alternative flows, what does a use case diagram look like, how to write a use case, use case template, use case example.
A use case is a description of how a user interacts with a system or product. Companies build use cases to establish success scenarios, failure scenarios, and any important variants or exceptions.
Many organizations leverage use case modeling tools — such as Miro, LucidChart, and SmartDraw, for some examples — to write or visually represent a use case.
Use cases are frequently employed in software development environments to simplify complicated concepts, but they can be just as important in project management for gathering requirements and defining a project’s scope.
Product management , product development , and product testing domains all use the use case methodology. Product managers and developers employ use cases in a similar manner: as a design tool to specify how the system will react to user activities. However, there are some key differences.
Product managers typically document user-focused use cases whereas developers document product-focused use cases. The user-focused use cases are primarily concerned with the user and their objectives. These are then passed to developers to guide decision-making during the product development process.
Product developers frequently add technical and design elements to provide crucial context. This set of improved use cases gives the development team the insight it needs to start designing, creating, and testing the product and its features.
A use case is designed to reveal system demands early on in the process.

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Use cases concentrate on the system’s users rather than the system itself. A user case should be understandable to all stakeholders , not only developers and testers, because they are mostly narrative prose. This includes customers, users, and executives.
During the early planning stages, you should involve whichever roles are best suited to solve the problem at hand. This encourages end users to buy into the solution and reduces surprises once the system is put into place.
Each use case is designed specifically to cover only one application of the system. That said, a key advantage of use case modeling is that it also covers all potential problems. Finding minor requirements early on in the project saves a ton of time by identifying exceptions to a successful scenario.
Finally, after you create a use case, you can use it to guide the creation of many other software development components, such as object models, test case definitions, user documentation, and project planning (cost, complexity, and scheduling estimations).
As a product manager, one of the best justifications for creating use cases is that they serve as genuine connecting points. They should be truly understandable to both business and technical users so that everybody can comment on them.
Business analysts leverage use cases as a communication tool to align people to take a common approach and share a common understanding of what the software aims to accomplish.
A technical product manager, on the other hand, might employ use cases to reach business stakeholders without using tech jargon — talking more about what the system does than how it does it. When you get down to the dirty work of coding, this will really help you accelerate and clarify communication to ensure that you’re building what the business genuinely needs and desires.
Elements of a use case
Let’s break down the components of a typical use case and explain the purpose and objective of each:
Actors are the people or things that interact with your system. An actor could be an individual, a company, a team, or something else entirely. Anything that exists outside of a system and engages in some sort of interaction with it qualifies as an actor.
The stakeholder who gets the ball rolling with an interaction to achieve a goal using your system is known as the primary actor.
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Your system, which some people refer to as a scene, is composed of a number of decisions and interactions made by your actors.
The results of an actor’s interactions with the system are your goals.
Your system may produce several outputs in some circumstances while only producing one in others. Before continuing, consider modifying your method if you encounter any barriers to achieving your goal.
Preconditions are assertions or realities regarding what must occur prior to and following the use case.
Often, software developers are aware of the actions that must come before the next one.
For example, let’s say an online shopper clicks on a product to get a detailed description and customer feedback. The Add to cart button won’t show up until the item is in stock and accessible at the warehouse.
A use case that operates flawlessly and exactly as intended with no exceptions or mistakes in the run is known as the fundamental flow or main success scenario. This frequently serves as a starting point when developing various features.
Knowing how a typical scenario operates can help you write accurate code and come up with alternative flows.
A deviation from the primary success scenario is known as an alternative path or alternative flow. This typically manifests when a system-level error occurs.
In this section of the use case, you frequently list the most probable or noteworthy exceptions an actor might make. Alternative flows in the e-commerce example might include:
- Adding items to favorites instead of a shopping cart
- Sharing items with friends or family members
- Looking at reviews and comments about a product or service
In a use case diagram, stick figures are the most typical way to depict actors .
The use cases/ goals you create will be horizontal ovals with a few words of text inside detailing each activity; you can use various colors to indicate different goals.
Associations that depict the connections between components use solid and dotted lines.
Each set of use cases within a system are grouped together by system boundary boxes , which are rectangles.
An example of a use case diagram for a medical clinic application might look something like this:

To write a use case, complete the following steps:
- Determine the target audience for the product
- Select a user from that list
- Determine what, exactly, the user wants to do with the product and create a separate use case for each action
- Determine the typical flow of events for each use case when the user uses the product
- In the use case description, describe the fundamental course. Give examples of what the user performs and what the system responds with so that the user is aware of both
- Consider alternative courses of action and include them to “expand” the use case once the fundamental process has been presented
- Search for connections between the use cases. Extract these and mark them as typical use cases for courses
- Repeat steps 2–7 for all other users
You can use the template below to assist you in writing your own use case:

To use this use case template , click here and make a copy by selecting File > Make a copy from the top menu bar.
To show how the steps outlined above work in practice, let’s look at an example use case of a housekeeper doing laundry:
- Actors — Residents, housekeeper, etc.
- Primary actor — Housekeeper
- Goals — To do laundry, fold all items, iron clothes if necessary
- Preconditions — It is a Friday and there is laundry in the laundry room
The basic flow for this use case example is as follows:
The housekeeper comes to the laundry room on Friday. They organize the available laundry. After that, they clean and then dry each load. They folds the articles that need folding, then iron and hang the wrinkled items
Alternative flows :
- The housekeeper irons any wrinkled items before putting them on a hanger
- The housekeeper rewashes anything she finds to be still dirty
Use cases help product teams understand a system’s functions from the viewpoint of distinct users. They help stakeholders across the organization visually understand the various flows and how user groups interact with the system.
Use cases also support the development team when generating concepts and assessing the viability of the use cases. Use case definition is a crucial phase in the software development process and is a critical skill for any product manager.
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7 Case Management Use Cases and How They Help Your Organization
A workflow is what every business uses to manage the various processes within each function. Workflows can either be structured or unstructured. In an unstructured workflow , the path required to resolve the case is open ended or not clearly known from the beginning. The course will only continue to reveal itself as the issue is being resolved and more data is gathered.
Types of Case Management Use-cases & It’s Applications
Process to decision
- Service requests
Incident management
Investigations
Bug Tracking
Service Request
- Incident Management
Reimbursement/claims processing
Sales pipeline management
Flexible order management
In conclusion
Because of the unpredictability of unstructured workflows, the process of resolving them is heavily dependent on human input. However, certain aspects of unstructured workflows can be automated. When such workflows are automated, the process of moving data from one stage of the case resolution to the other is handled by an automated program. The automated case management software handles the flow of tasks and data across various stages of the task resolution by automatically pushing data, notification, deadlines, reminders, updates, etc.
Automating unstructured workflow like this makes it easier to track the status of the case from start to finish. This also improves efficiency, eliminates redundancy, and simplifies the process of delegating tasks. With the greater visibility and transparency of processes comes higher accountability—and this greatly helps handle ad-hoc tasks and streamline operations.
Types of Cases
Typically, case management is often applied across four main types of work. This includes process-to-decision cases, service requests, investigations and incident management. We’ll take a quick look at each of these to help you understand the different circumstances under which case management can be applied.
This type of case relies heavily on a set of structured processes and rules to coordinate casework. In process-to-decision cases, solutions are aimed at making decisions based on known policies and procedures. A typical example of this is the process of handling service requests. This begins with a client or user submitting a request to the caseworker, which triggers a case workflow to start.
Service request casework refers to the process of making decisions based on the specific terms of a particular service. It often involves complex customer service interactions that are expected to conform to particular requirements. In most cases, managing service requests often involves multiple steps and collaboration between different personnel and departments. A lot of information is also passed along at each step of the way. Some aspects of managing service requests can be automated using case management software.
Incident management refers to the process of responding to or resolving accidents or complaints. This usually begins with taking a detailed record of the “who, “what”, “where”, “when”, and “how” of a situation in order to build a story of the incident and facilitate a resolution. Incident case management usually requires the caseworker to demonstrate a sense of proactiveness and reactiveness.
An example of incident management is resolving HR cases or workplace disputes. The caseworker has to ensure that the incident is handled according to policies and procedures. However, there is no specific template to this, and the handle issues like response depend on the details of the particular case. In any case, it is the case manager’s responsibility to ensure that the dispute is resolved and output is measured and documented to improve the handling of future incidents like this.
Investigation management involves a reaction to specific events or circumstances. In this case type, the case manager has to collect evidence about the case to make an informed decision. They will have to access information from multiple documents, conduct research, and manage numerous interactions in making case decisions. An example of investigation management is handling an insurance claim or medical malpractice. The case manager has to gather information about the case, carry out an investigation to determine the cause and analyze results to determine future responses.
Case Management Use Cases
Since case management is applicable across various organizations and industries, different case management use cases are designed to achieve different aims. The following are 7 everyday use cases for case management tools:
Automated case management software can be used to track bugs or issues reported by users of a product or discovered internally by the production team. Using a case management tool gives a complete view of the bug and makes it easy for case managers to quickly review all the details of the bug and its resolution status. The priority level of each bug can be easily determined to decide which one requires more attention. Cases are also pushed to the appropriate member of the development team, and resolution is easily tracked with reminders and other tools. This ensures that bugs are handled and resolved quickly for improved customer satisfaction.
Dynamic case management puts users in control
Service desk
Internal requests at service desks can be handled with automated software. A case management tool makes it possible to route support tickets to the right people that will handle them. When a ticket is opened, it is automatically sent to the appropriate department or individual for resolution. Responses can also be automated to indicate whether an issue has been resolved or provide feedback regarding service requests. An automated case management tool can also handle onboarding tasks and knowledge base management at a service desk.
Incident management refers to the process of handling an unfavorable incident. It involves a primarily proactive approach but can also be reactive. A typical example of this is emergency response management, such as first responders or hazard response. It involves engaging and managing field workers and quickly routing incidents to them for a quick resolution. Using an automated tool ensures that such incidents are correctly and effectively handled for the best possible results.
Helping customers to resolve their issues or providing answers to their questions can get complicated and complex to handle. Evidentiary documentation may be needed to support claims, and providing required help may require communication with different employees across various departments within an organization. An automated case management tool serves as a central hub from where personnel can respond to customer questions and inquiries. This ensures that customer concerns are address quickly and efficiently at all times.
When a customer files a claim, the goal is to process it as quickly as possible and generate reports for quick analysis. However, the complexity of cases like this can make it challenging to achieve rapid and efficient resolution without delay. For instance, if a person gets injured on a job and files a claim with an insurance firm, managing such a case may require scheduling occupational therapy or physical therapy sessions or setting up the claimant to see particular subjects after duly investigating the circumstances of their claim. Using an automated case management tool will ensure that all aspects of a case like this are properly managed to lessen the financial risk to the client.
An excellent automated case management tool is a valuable customer service tool that helps manage the sales pipeline from start to finish. It makes it possible to automate and seamlessly manage activities involved in managing customer relationships and converting prospects to clients in the long run.
Case management tools also help optimize order management to ensure that orders are properly processed and avoid bottlenecks. This is particularly important since orders have to be tracked across the various stages involved in fulfilling it. Automating multiple steps of this process reduces the error margin and ensures orders are fulfilled to the customer’s satisfaction.
Kissflow Workflow provides a way to organize and manage all of these different types of case management workflows to boost productivity and performance. By providing a simple and intuitive solution with tailor-made features that can be customized to suit specific needs, Kissflow makes it easier to organize and manage cases seamlessly across different organizations.
Check out Kissflow Workflow to discover the benefits of automating case management for your company.

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What Is a Use Case?
A use case is a concept used in software development, product design, and other fields to describe how a system can be used to achieve specific goals or tasks. It outlines the interactions between users or actors and the system to achieve a specific outcome.
In this article, we’ll dive into the details of what use cases are, how they are used in software development, and their benefits. We’ll also explore common types of use cases and provide some tips on how to create effective use cases.
Moreover, to help you effectively manage your project's use cases, we’ll offer a pre-built requirements management template that can help you gather all the necessary information and ensure all stakeholders are aligned on the project’s goals.
What is a use case? Use cases explained
A use case is a description of the ways in which a user interacts with a system or product. A use case may establish the success scenarios, the failure scenarios, and any critical variations or exceptions. A use case can be written or made visual with the help of a use case model tool.
The history of the use case
Swedish computer scientist Ivar Jacobson presented the first article on use cases in 1987, describing how the technique was used at telecommunications company Ericsson to capture system requirements. In 1992, Jacobson co-authored the book "Object-Oriented Software Engineering — A Use Case Driven Approach," which helped popularize use cases for specifying functional requirements in software development.
Jacobson later joined American software engineers Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh to create the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which introduced a standard way to visualize the design of a system. Since then, the technique has been adapted into use case writing "templates" to streamline the capture of high-level requirements.
What is the purpose of a use case?
The purpose of a use case is to:
- Manage scope
- Establish requirements
- Outline the ways a user will interact with the system
- Visualize system architecture
- Communicate technical requirements to business stakeholders
- Risk management
Why do project managers need to know about use cases?
Project managers need to know about use cases because they help communicate strategy to stakeholders and bridge the gap between business justification and technical requirements.
PMI also notes that “use cases provide a structure for gathering customer requirements and setting the project scope.” But what does that mean in practical terms?
Let’s say that you are a project manager for an education tech firm. Your company’s latest product idea is an app for students where they can receive live tuition for a monthly subscription fee. Creating a use case for this application can tell stakeholders and the project team who the customer is, how the customer will interact with the product, and what the scope gap meaning and requirements of the project will be.
How to write a use case for a project
When presented in written form, a use case can be a helpful piece of project documentation. Use cases are a common requirements artifact , and they can smoothen communication across technical and business stakeholders.
Depending on the intended audience and system under discussion, the use case can be as detailed or basic as needed. A use case document should establish and identify a few key components — these are:
- System : A system is the product, service, or software under discussion.
- Actors : An actor is a user or anything else that exhibits behavior when interacting with the system. The actor could be another system, a piece of hardware, or an entire organization. There are four types of actors: a system under discussion, an internal actor, a primary actor, and a secondary actor. The most commonly referred to are the latter two systems. A primary actor initiates the interaction with the system, while a secondary actor may provide a service to the system.
- Scenario : In “Applying UML and Patterns,” Larman notes that “a scenario is a specific sequence of actions and interactions between actors and the system under discussion; it is also called a use case instance.”
- Use case : A use case outlines the success and failure scenarios that can occur when the actor(s) interact with the system. In this section, you’d establish the main success scenario, i.e., the most desirable outcome between the actor and the system. You would also establish the alternative paths, which explain what happens in the event of failure or error.
Let’s take a look at a simple use case example:
- Use case for meal delivery application : Individuals can use an app to place food orders directly to restaurants. When the user places an order, they are prompted to pay through the app or pay when the food arrives. Once that is confirmed, the restaurant will receive a request through their system. The food will then be prepared, packaged, and delivered to the individual. In this case, the app must be able to receive orders, process payments, and communicate with the restaurant electronically.
- System : Food delivery application
- Primary actor : Customer ordering a meal
- Scenario : The user browses restaurant options. Once the preferred restaurant is selected, they place an order through the application. The user pays online or verifies they will pay in person. The order is sent from the app to the restaurant’s internal system. The restaurant worker receives and processes the electronic order. This use case illustrates how both the customer and restaurant employee (the actors) interact with the food delivery application (the system) and the expected outcome of each interaction. This helps sketch a framework for what is expected in the development stage. The app must be able to process payments, for example.
What is a use case model?
A use case model is a visual representation of the interactions between an actor and a system. As PMI also notes, use case models depict processes, which helps to further express preconditions and triggers.
A use case model is commonly expressed using UML (Universal Modeling Language). In these visualizations, there are three main components: the system, the actors, and the use case.
The system is represented by a rectangle or “boundary box." Actors are shown as stick people outside of the boundary box, while the use cases are presented as text in ovals within the box. Solid and dashed lines represent the association between the actors and the system’s use cases.
Use case model example:

(Source: Visual Paradigm Online )
What is the difference between a use case model and a use case diagram?
A use case diagram is simply a type of use case model. A use case model diagram uses text and shapes to represent the relationship between a user and a system.
Primarily, use case model diagrams are used to:
- Visualize the flow and behavior of the system
- Illustrate the functionality of the system
- Represent key system-user interactions
Depending on the system, a use case model diagram can vary in complexity, showing basic associations or expanding to show multiple exceptions.
Utilizing use cases with Wrike
Utilizing use cases with Wrike can streamline your product development process and help ensure your software meets the needs of its users.
With Wrike’s requirements management template , you can track all of your use case requirements in one place. When it’s time to plan and execute your project, Wrike’s project scheduling template can help you create a clear, actionable plan that keeps your team on track. Try Wrike today and see how easy it is to incorporate use cases into your product development process.
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Use Case Management
bSI Use Case Management Service (UCMS)
The Use Case Management Service of buildingSMART international enables the capture, specification and exchange of best practices and makes them accessible to the entire built asset industry. Throughout the entire process of design, construction and operation, the information exchange requirement must be defined for each BIM use case. Based on the Information Delivery Manual (IDM) methodology developed by buildingSMART, the operational processes and, as a result, the information exchange requirements are described. The exact definition of the information flow between the respective project participants enables collaborative work and the efficient and error-free exchange of data.
Engage yourself on the Use Case Management Service? By doing so, you contribute to a better understanding of the BIM methodology, to the faster provision of Information Delivery Manuals (IDM) and to the overall improvement of BIM projects. The Use Case Management Service allows all members of buildingSMART as well as companies and associations to collaboratively develop their projects in a co-creation space and then publish them on the UCM website.
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Case management overview
- 4 contributors
By planning, tracking, and analyzing cases, you can develop efficient resolutions that can be used for similar issues. For example, when customer service representatives or Human Resources generalists create cases, they can find information in knowledge articles to help them work more efficiently. The following examples show how cases can be used for different situations in an organization.
Example: How Fabrikam uses cases for customers in the private sector
Lisa, a customer service representative at Fabrikam, receives a telephone call from Lionel, a Fabrikam customer. Lionel is having trouble setting the correct volume level on the new sound system that Fabrikam installed in Lionel's music store. Lisa creates a case for Lionel and assigns the Volume category to the case. Lisa then elevates the priority and assigns a one-day service level agreement (SLA) to the case.
Lisa also enters the case details in the case log. Lisa notices that several knowledge articles are associated with the Volume category, and that three of them are marked as helpful for resolving cases. Lisa opens each article and discusses the resolution steps with Lionel, but none of the solutions solve the issue that Lionel is having with the new sound system. Lisa tells Lionel that an audio technician will call within 24 hours and work to solve the issue.
Lisa activates the case, and a set of activities is created. Lisa assigns the activities to Terrence, a member of the audio engineering team. Terrence sees that new activities are assigned, opens the case and reads the case log to learn more about the case. Terrence encountered the same issue the day before, and developed a solution. Terrence contacts Lionel and offers this solution for the issue. Terrence also enters it in the case details.
Because the solution is successful, Terrence decides to document it, so that other people can use it if they encounter the same issue. Terrence adds the document to the Knowledge article page, assigns the document to the Volume category, and manually elevates the ranking, so that other Fabrikam employees will know that it's a successful solution. Terrence then elevates the case to the next level. By elevating the case, Terrence creates a new activity for Marie, who is a quality assurance representative in the customer service department.
Marie sees that a new activity is assigned, and opens the case that is associated with the activity. Marie reviews the case and the case details to make sure that the correct process was followed for the case. Marie verifies that the actual case time did not exceed the time frame that was estimated in the SLA. Marie notes that Terrence contacted the customer, and that the issue was resolved. Marie is satisfied with the treatment that the customer received and the results of the case. Marie resolves the case as closed. On closing the case, the open activity that is assigned to Marie is also closed.
Example: How City Power & Light uses cases for customers in the public sector
Annie, a customer service representative with City Power & Light, receives a telephone call from a resident of the city that City Power & Light serves. Annie records the call as an activity and takes notes of the conversation. The resident tells Annie that their house has no power. Annie informs the resident that City Power & Light will investigate, find, and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Annie then creates a case, associates the telephone call with the case, and creates a service order. Annie knows that other residents are likely to call to report a power outage. Therefore, to avoid overwhelming the customer service center, and to save time, Annie sends a group instant message (IM) to inform the other representatives about the issue, and to tell them that a case and service order have been created. Annie includes the case number and service order number in the IM. Then, if City Power & Light receives more telephone calls about the power outage, the customer service representatives can create an activity for each telephone call and assign it to the existing case.
Example: How Fabrikam uses cases for employees
The following scenarios show how Fabrikam Human Resources generalists in different locations can use case management when they address issues for employees.
In Great Britain
Christine, the Human Resources generalist for the Great Britain division of Fabrikam, receives a telephone call from Peter, a Fabrikam employee. Christine is informed that nine weeks ago, immediately after the birth of Peter's son, Peter changed the number of dependents on the tax withholdings. Peter wants to know why the changes haven't become effective. Christine creates a case for Peter and reviews Peter's tax information. Christine learns that, although Peter entered new dependent information, a start date for the new tax withholdings wasn't selected. Christine informs Peter to select a start date and resubmit the changes. Peter replies to Christine's message informing that Peter has now selected a start date and resubmitted the changes. Christine attaches the email message from Peter to the case record, verifies that the correct changes were made and submitted, and closes the case.
In the United States
Luke, the Human Resources generalist for the United States division of Fabrikam, receives an email message from Shannon, a Fabrikam employee. Shannon is a machine operator who was injured on the job six months ago, and has been working with Humongous Insurance to have the medical expenses paid. Because Shannon contacted Luke about this issue four weeks ago, a case has already been created. Shannon's new email message explains that Humongous Insurance is still not returning the telephone calls. Luke opens the existing case, adds Shannon's email message as a document, and reviews the case log. When creating this case, Luke assigned the Insurance category to it but now sees that there is a new knowledge article that is associated with the Insurance category. Luke reads the knowledge article and learns that all phones at Humongous Insurance are down while the company's telephone system is being updated. The article states that the insurance company sent an email message to all its customers, but that several customers did not receive the message because of a problem with the company's email system. All customers who have active insurance claims are asked to send their inquiries to Humongous Insurance by email or paper mail. Luke sends Shannon an email message that explains what Shannon must do to have the insurance claim settled. Luke also ranks the knowledge article as a helpful source of information. Luke creates another activity to follow up with both Shannon and Humongous Insurance in four weeks and make sure that the claim has been resolved. After four weeks, Luke contacts Shannon and learns that Humongous Insurance has paid the claims, and that Shannon is happy with the resolution. Luke changes the status of the case to Closed .
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How to Read a Business Book
- Timothy R. Clark

Eight ways to get the most out of it — as efficiently as possible.
More than 1,000 new business books are released each month in the United States alone. The good ones represent original contributions to theory and practice or provide meaningful extensions or applications of those theories and practices. The others tend to present recycled and superficial treatments of those original contributions. So how can you ensure not only that you’re reading a book that’s worth your time, but that you’re getting the most out of that time? The author presents eight ways to allocate your reading time to your greatest advantage through careful selection based on need, triaging the mode of consumption, and harvesting the takeaways for application.
Reading a business book is an exercise in efficiency, not literary aesthetics. You’re trying to maximize the return on time invested. For the executive, time allocation is as important as capital allocation. So, in approaching any business book, there are two goals: First, determining if the book can help you do your job; second, figuring out the quickest way to extract that value. In writing several business books — and reading more than I can count — I’ve found that, for books worth reading, the process consists of three steps: compression, absorption, and application.
But first, step back and consider the anatomy of a typical business book. The components are almost always the same:
- Concepts (key ideas)
- Numbers (data and statistics)
- Tools (frameworks and diagnostics)
- Examples (stories and case studies to illustrate application)
The job to be done is to extract insights to increase judgment and skills to increase performance.
Consider that three groups of people write business books:
- Practitioners: Leaders and founders who practice business and share their experience.
- Researchers: Scholars and academics who analyze data, test hypotheses, and create new theories.
- Advisors: Consultants and domain experts who advise those who practice business. Advisors tend to straddle the worlds of theory and practice.
Certainly, there are great business books written in each camp, but keep in mind that more than 1,000 new titles are released each month alone in the United States (some of which are published by Harvard Business Review Press). The good ones represent original contributions to theory and practice or provide meaningful extensions or applications of those theories and practices. The others tend to present recycled and superficial treatments of those original contributions. With that in mind, here are eight suggestions to guide you through the process of compression, absorption, and application:
Compression
Begin with purpose..
Define a reading plan with a need or opportunity in mind. Otherwise, you’ll wander and waste time on books that are either irrelevant or of low quality. If you’re not reading to learn at the moment of need, you’ll likely forget what you take in anyway. Define your use case. Do you want to inform a decision, analyze a situation, or develop a skill?
Creating a living document to lay out your next five reads can help. Regularly review and adjust your plan based on your evolving needs and the value you’re gaining from your reading. A structured approach can help you stay focused, prioritize relevant books, and optimize your learning experience.
Read the introduction.
When you begin any business book, engage in what philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler called “inspectional reading” to evaluate the potential time investment. Begin with the introduction. A good one is a compression of the whole: dense with insights and laying out the bones of the argument in a coherent, compelling way. It should summarize the topic, frame the problem, and explain the central idea. In almost every case, ignore the preface and acknowledgments, which are obligatory elements that rarely add value.
Beware of bulk validity.
Watch out for long books that attempt to establish validity with bulk. If the author can’t get to the point, they don’t know the point. They haven’t crystallized their thinking. As historian Yval Noah Harari reminds us, “In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.” And clarity means brevity. There are some exceptions in which authors offer powerful insights but load their books with tedious, long-winded examples and case studies. In those instances, skim or skip the stories and case studies.
Challenge the thesis.
Regardless of the topic you’re reading about, there’s no definitive answer, no single authoritative source, no one formula that will solve your problem. Even if you open a book with confidence because you trust the author, the data, the argument, or the reviews, commit yourself to being the loyal opposition. Argue with the author. Remember, there’s competing advice on every business topic. If you must place a bet based on the author’s advice, where do you stand? In the end, the author is your thinking partner. They are there to challenge you, not think for you. Never outsource your critical thinking.
Read, skim, or toss.
After reading the introduction, triage the book. If the introduction doesn’t move you with relevant insight, you’re done. Toss it. If it does, you’ve met the bar for skimming — but not reading. Here’s how to skim:
- Analyze the table of contents.
- Read headings and chapter summaries.
- Slow down and look for what’s directly relevant to you in each chapter.
- Pay attention to diagrams and call-out boxes.
- Read the conclusion.
At any point, be it on page one or 100, if the cost/benefit equation of continuing isn’t what you want it to be, quit. Cut your losses and abandon ship. There’s nothing heroic or moral about finishing a book. At the same time, if that equation tilts the other way and the ratio of insights-per-page is much higher than you thought, you may have a book worth reading. Go back to chapter one and dig into it. Keep reading until that ratio drops you back to skimming.
Application
Harvest the book..
If a book is worth reading, it’s worth harvesting. Compress your yield by making highlights and marginal notes and then listing both key insights and points of criticism. If you’re listening to an audiobook, stop the recording to make a note or record a voice memo when you glean an important insight. Store that list or file in an accessible format and revisit it periodically. Then share the captured insights with colleagues and team members — there’s no better way to internalize learning and make it a part of your portfolio of knowledge and skills.
Test use cases.
A business book isn’t supposed to tell you what to think; it’s supposed to teach you how to think. It provides a lens through which to frame, interpret, and solve a problem. Once you’ve absorbed a concept, argument, theory, or tool, find a use case to apply what you’ve learned. Until you apply it, a concept remains an untested hypothesis. For example, early in my management career, I read this statement from Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive : “The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.” I took that concept back to our strategic planning team and we incorporated the practice of inflection-point spotting instead of trend spotting. That insight was enormously helpful in practice.
Reject quantity.
When it comes to the dynamic range of talent in an organization, it quickly becomes clear that 100 B players do not equal one A player. Why? Because the A player creates and delivers value in a qualitatively superior way. It’s simply not additive. Similarly, 100 average business books can never equal the value of one good one. A LinkedIn post with someone’s mile-high book stack and the “100 books I read this year” tagline may motivate you to crush a few more titles. But remember, it’s never about quantity, it’s about quality. Your return-on-time-invested is measured by positive behavioral change and the application of tools to produce better outcomes, not the number of books you’ve read. Perhaps instead of reading another book, read a good one twice.
In my 30 years of leadership development experience, I’ve seen that reading and listening to business books is the single most common way business leaders engage in continuous professional development. The trick is allocating your reading time to your greatest advantage through careful selection based on need, triaging the mode of consumption — whether reading, skimming, or quitting — and harvesting the takeaways for application.
- Timothy R. Clark is an organizational anthropologist and founder and CEO of LeaderFactor , a global leadership consulting and training firm. He works with CEOs and their teams, helping them achieve data-driven cultural transformation. His most recent book is The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation (Berrett-Koehler 2020).
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Dynamic Case Management for the Way You Work
Unite people, process and information to orchestrate complex work

Improve Efficiency and Reduce Operational Costs
Design, build, monitor, and continuously improve perfect-fit case management applications faster than ever before. Empower your knowledge workers to resolve complex problems that require input from multiple sources. Add structure, context, and automation to improve productivity and reduce costs. Whether your “cases” take the form of incidents, investigations, or service requests, the OutSystems platform can help.
Empower Process Experts
Reach case resolution faster.
Improve Visibility and Cross-team Communications
Simplify Compliance and Reduce Risk
Continually improve business processes.
City of Oakland addresses citizen concerns and improves transparency through Police Officer Complaint case management application
No one knows the mechanics of your business processes better than the people that own them. Now they’ll have the freedom and flexibility to create their own case management solutions. Designed specifically for non-IT users, OutSystems workflow builders allow both process owners and developers to optimize their business through an easy-to-use wizard that abstracts development processes and allows them to build applications in minutes, not days or weeks.

Never miss out on important context with documentation and work notes that follow cases from creation to close. Break down data silos with integrations to any internal or external systems. Enjoy streamlined approvals with automated business rules that put the right task in front of the right approver to ensure your cases are resolved as quickly as possible.
Shepherd and Wedderburn is using OutSystems to build innovative systems for clients, including a case management solution that allows lawyers to handle 20 times more cases.
Improve Work Visibility and Cross-team Communication
Manage your workload more efficiently by prioritizing the most critical cases. Delegate to other team members when you need back-up or find that a case is outside your domain of expertise. Get the current status of shared work and easily collaborate between team members or departments.
BRI Security improved service and performance through work transparency.

Compliance is complicated. Audits, reporting, new regulations, data restrictions—it’s hard for a business to keep up. With OutSystems, you can trace all business transactions related to a case for easy audits and automate compliance processes to avoid fines.
GarantiBank meet strict compliance standards while digitizing complex end-to-end processes.
Use application analytics to get insights on SLAs, performance, and team workloads. Armed with this data, you can pivot resources and improve business processes in order to operate at your fullest potential.
Lloyds of London insurance broker Tysers built a cloud-based platform that consolidates processes and automates the end-to-end lifecycle of a policy.

How OutSystems Helps
Easy integrations.
OutSystems makes integration with existing and new systems simple. Configure an integration connector instead of writing (and rewriting) custom code. This is much faster and far less error-prone. And when you are ready to add IoT or AI/ML to your applications, we have you covered there, too.
Flawless User Experience
Deliver applications that are functional and beautiful. With more than 140 UX/UI out of the box patterns, templates, and controls, now you don’t have to design and build from scratch. Run a single code base for all form factors regardless of device.

Keep Pace With Mobile
Mobile device screens, menus, buttons, and screen sizes are in constant flux, leaving mobile app developers scrambling. But not with OutSystems, as we regularly add support for new mobile operating systems so you can keep up with the pace of change.
Our advanced mobile features include:
- UI library for cross-platform,
- Pixel-perfect experiences,
- Secure offline capabilities,
- Prebuilt plugins for native device capabilities and sensors,
- Extensible platform to build custom plugins for native SDKs.

Future Proof Your Case Management Apps
Applications built with OutSystems rely on standard architectures and frameworks. No proprietary components, runtime engines, or interpreters required. Your new case management apps are generated into a fully open, standard, optimized, and documented set of server and client components. And, your intellectual property remains yours .

No Matter Your Use Case, We’ve Got You Covered
Any style of case management….
- Investigative
- Incident management
- Service requests
Across any industry…
- Higher Education
- Manufacturing
For an unlimited number of use cases…
- Claims Management
- Loan Origination
- Police Complaints
- Mobile Inspections
- Talent Acquisition
- Help Desk Ticketing
The Beginner’s Guide to Dynamic Case Management
What is dynamic case management who is using it and how can it help you prepare for the future of work.
The nature of work is changing from task-based to knowledge-driven, and now our supporting processes must change too. Get a better understanding of dynamic case management as a practice, and how it can help your organization operate more efficiently in the modern age of work. Download this eBook to learn:
- Dynamic case management basics and how it stacks up to BPM
- Workflow patterns and common use cases
- Who uses dynamic case management software
- Why modern application platforms and dynamic case management are a perfect match
- How companies like FICO and American Integrity are using dynamic case management solutions built with OutSystems to solve their unique challenges
- When to use dynamic case management as part of a larger digital transformation strategy
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Critical things project managers need to know about use cases

When you get into your car, you’ve got a destination in mind and, if you’re unsure how to get there, you’ll likely use a GPS as a guide. Prior to the existence of GPS, most people used paper maps to plot their routes. As technology evolved, the weaknesses and flaws of paper maps became all too apparent. Through use cases, businesses combined customers’ needs with the latest technology to create GPS and redefine the process of traveling to an unfamiliar location.
You can utilize use cases to create new technologies or redefine old processes by providing a thorough understanding of how all stakeholders (called “actors”) interact with a current process. While use cases are most often used in IT departments for software development, they can be valuable assets to project managers. Today we’ll discuss some of the most critical things project managers need to know about use cases and share how monday.com can help you apply that knowledge efficiently.
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What is a use case?
Simply put, a use case is a detailed description of how a system and actors interact. For use cases, an actor is defined as any person, role, or technology that interacts with the system. The system can be an actual technological system, software, or platform, but it can also be a set process within a business, like how food is delivered to customers via waiters.
The use case will define all the possible ways the system and actors can interact.
Using use cases to set up your project scope
Although use cases are most often used to define software requirements, you can apply them to project management to help set up your scope. In this scenario, when you write a use case, your system will likely be a business process you hope to refine, improve, or implement.
Begin by defining your process’s functional requirements and basic flow with a use case diagram. These diagrams use unified modeling language as a way to quickly and efficiently outline interactions. Generally, they will have interactions inside a clearly defined box that are connected to representations of actors outside the box. For example, if you’re trying to improve your HR process, actors could include HR professionals, company executives, and general employees. Interactions with the HR professional may include problem-solving or benefits management.
After creating a basic use case, project managers can conduct a thorough analysis and design ways to improve the current process. Case modeling also provides help with both the planning and execution phases of project management.
How use cases can help project managers with project planning and execution
Defining pre- and post-conditions is a crucial part of developing use cases because they provide vital information such as:
- What must be done before an interaction can happen. For example, before a customer can order an item through the drive-through, they must drive their car into the designated lane and view the menu.
- What optional interactions might exist . What happens if a customer forgets to order a drink and decides to add it to their order at the pick-up window instead?
Understanding these conditions can help with project planning and execution by preparing your team for potential setbacks. When you already know what roadblocks might occur within your project’s scope, you can create a plan ahead of time to mitigate any risks associated with potential roadblocks.
Benefits and limitations of use cases in project management
For project managers, use cases provide several key benefits, such as:
- Managing complexity in projects: Projects involve many moving parts, which quickly become complicated and overwhelming. Use cases help manage this complexity by clearly defining expectations regarding outcomes, resource allocation, and potential roadblocks. When you know what to expect, you can feel confident managing the many moving parts of a given project.
- Have basic groundwork set up pre-project: If you’ve outlined a detailed use case diagram, you’ll already have the basic groundwork for your upcoming project. This simplifies the launch process and can even help you exceed expectations or deadlines.
- Predefine basic requirements and needs: By utilizing a use case in project management, you can ensure all basic requirements, needs, and expectations are laid out ahead of time. Ensuring basic requirements are predefined helps guide team members towards realistic goals from day one.
You can’t always predict every interaction or outcome, and that is a significant limitation to use case studies. Unexpected roadblocks or unforeseen events can leave you blindsided, but proper risk mitigation methods should help to reduce the risks associated with roadblocks or bottlenecks.
Use case example: The drive-through
To improve their customers’ drive-through experience, a fast food chain designs a use case study to improve their process. They find that the following interactions occur between the system and actors:
- A customer drives up to the drive-through and looks at the menu before ordering.
- A customer orders their food by letting the cashier know what they want via the speaker system.
- A cashier types in the customer’s food order into the point-of-sale system.
- A cook prepares the food.
- A customer drives to the window to pay for their food.
- A cashier or other employee hands the customer their food.
- The customer takes the food and drives away.
Using this case study, the fast food chain realizes it can reduce wait times by having two separate windows, one for paying and one for receiving. The result is reduced wait time for customers before reaching a window and an efficient split of the workload between more workers.
Use case and monday.com
Creating a use case diagram and implementing what you’ve learned is easy with monday.com. You can use our project management software and Work OS to:
- Simplify the use case process: From start to finish, our Work OS simplifies the use case process by providing a central workplace for all team members. This central workplace can seamlessly handle the project during execution.
- View and compare the information you need most: Customizable dashboards make it easy to track, view, and compare the information you need most to outline your case study. Having all applicable information at a glance allows you to be more efficient and organized in your use case, making you less likely to forget critical details.
- Integrate with your favorite tools: Have a favorite tool you use to help with your use cases? monday.com integrates with numerous tools , so you don’t have to switch platforms to complete your Work.
- Outline and track project progress: Use Kanban boards to outline and track your progress through the use case creation, into your project, up to completion.
- Organize and track your critical documents: Our workdocs let you organize and track your critical documents from one storage site. Easily find what you need, and print or email that information as needed.
Frequently asked questions about use cases
What is an essential use case.
An essential use case defines the most basic functions a system must do to fulfill its user’s goals. Instead of looking at all the potential use cases, an essential use case only looks at the necessary ones.
Why are use cases important?
Use cases are important because they explain system behavioral expectations and identify any issues, errors, or roadblocks with that process. They can also provide a list of goals that you can use to establish the cost or complexity of the system.
How do you write a use case?
To write a case study, you need to:
- Identify who the “actor” is that will be interacting with the system
- Define the end goal of that user
- Determine what the normal course of events will be for the user to achieve that goal
- Decide the interactions that could likely be taken and outline them
- Consider alternative possibilities and add them as “extended” use cases
- Repeat steps one through five for every actor that may use the system
Simplify use cases for better results on monday.com
Use cases allow project managers to define their project’s scope and create better outcomes by offering a thorough understanding of expectations during the project’s course. Using monday.com to develop use cases and manage associated projects can help reduce complexity and improve efficiency across the board.
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Case Management Best Practice Guide

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These use cases are designed for ICAM Enterprise Architects and business owners and describe some of the most common ICAM business processes.
Each use case includes a high-level summary of the scenario, individuals and systems involved in the use case, illustrations that show the required steps to achieve the end goal, and an icon that indicates the practice area and the service with which the use case most closely aligns.
For details about ICAM services, see the Services Framework .
While each use case describes a particular ICAM business process, the use cases are all interrelated. The use cases generalize the activities and technologies to make sure they apply across many agencies. The use cases don’t include agency-specific functions and process details because your agency should analyze your systems and processes to align with these broad use cases.
You can combine or build upon the ICAM use cases to support your agency’s scenarios and needs.
Use Case 1. Create and Maintain an Identity

When you onboard an employee or contractor at your agency, you collect identity information from the individual and store parts of that information as identity attributes. These attributes serve as a digital proxy for the individual’s identity, also known as an enterprise identity.
In this use case, an administrator needs to collect or manage identity data for an employee or contractor for the purpose of creating an enterprise identity record and maintaining it throughout its lifecycle.

I want to create a new enterprise identity so that an individual may be established as a federal employee or contractor that will need to be identity proofed, credentialed, and granted access to agency services.
Use Case 2. Proof an Identity

Before you can create a credential and assign it to an individual, that person must provide proof of their claimed identity. Identity proofing is the process by which a federal agency collects and verifies information about a person to establish an enterprise identity.
The location or information that a person needs to access informs the Identity Assurance Level (IAL), which determines the elements you should require from that person for identity proofing. There are three IALs; however, federal agencies require a minimum of IAL2 for employees or contractors with recurring access to government resources, so these use cases do not include IAL1.
This use case describes the high-level steps to proof an identity at IAL2 or IAL3. Depending on the required IAL, you may require increasingly more information from an employee or contractor or partner along with additional verification steps. The information provided by the employee or contractor is also known as identity evidence. Identity evidence may be physical, such as passports, driver’s licenses, and birth certificates.
- IAL2 - first and last name, email address, and address of record, supported by appropriate identity documentation and verified as strong.
- IAL3 - first and last name, email address, address of record, and fingerprints, supported by appropriate identity documentation and verified as superior.
For more information about identity proofing and IALs, see NIST SP 800-63A (Section 2.2).

- I want to proof the identity of an employee or contractor to verify that the individual is who she says she is so that she can be issued a unique enterprise credential.
- A prospective employee or contractor has filled out their information in an HR system and requires IAL3 proofing and minimum background investigations. The prospective employee/contractor is then scheduled for in-person proofing. The prospective employee/contractor brings required identity documentation; the information is verified using approved documentation and biometrics are captured.
Use Case 3. Manage the Entitlements Lifecycle

You can assign access entitlements to individuals, roles, and groups. These entitlements define an employee or contractor’s access to agency services, so you’ll need to assign entitlements before an employee or contractor can access an agency service.
In this use case, an administrator needs to assign entitlements to an employee or contractor.

- I want to indicate that an employee or contractor requires and is allowed access to an agency service so that they can access the service when needed.
- An employee is hired to be part of the financial review team and requires access to financial applications. The employee has a role assigned to their enterprise identity record and associated with their identity attributes.
Use Case 4. Create and Issue a Credential

After you identity proof an individual, you’ll issue some proof of that individual’s claimed identity. A credential (like a physical card) is a type of authenticator that serves as a tool for an employee or contractor to gain access to agency services.
In this use case, an administrator needs to issue a credential to an employee or contractor.
Note: The preferred credential for employees and contractors is a PIV card. For cases where you cannot issue a PIV card, you must use a combination of factors to reach at least an Authenticator Assurance Level 2 (AAL2) credential.
For more information about authentication and AALs, see NIST SP 800-63B (Section 4).

I want to issue an enterprise credential, unique to an employee or contractor, so that they are able to access federal buildings and protected resources to which they require access.
Use Case 5. Issue a Derived Credential

A derived credential is a credential derived from an existing credential, with a different form factor, such as a credential on a mobile device. Derived credentials have the same IAL as the existing credential and the same or lower AAL.
When an employee or contractor requires authentication but cannot leverage an existing credential, they can use a derived credential. To be eligible for a derived credential, the employee or contractor must already have a valid credential with Authenticator Assurance Level (AAL) 2 or 3.
In this use case, an employee or contractor interacts with the agency services to register or request a derived credential.

- I want to provide an employee or contractor, who has already been issued an enterprise credential, a derived credential so that they can authenticate to enterprise applications.
- An employee or contractor travels quite a bit as part of their job. Accordingly, they are frequently limited to using a small tablet or their phone to stay connected while on the go. In this case, a derived credential is needed for purposes such as accessing secure agency websites or an agency VPN from their mobile device.
Use Case 6: Manage the Credential Lifecycle

Active credentials require regular maintenance. This use case describes the most common credential maintenance activities:
- Reset a credential - An employee or contractor forgets the password or PIN associated with a credential and requests a reset.
- Renew a credential - An employee or contractor’s credential is expiring or their identity information changes, so they request a replacement credential. You must renew a credential prior to the expiration date; otherwise, the employee or contractor must go through the issuance process again.
- Revoke a credential - An employee or contractor is no longer eligible for their credential (like separating from the issuing agency). The sponsor, supervisor, or administrator requests a revocation of all associated credentials and enterprise accounts.
You should periodically review your employee or contractors’ eligibility for credentials to identify potential orphaned data.

Reset a Credential
In this use case, an administrator needs to reset a password or PIN for an employee or contractor credential.
Renew a Credential
In this use case, an administrator needs to issue a new credential to replace one that will expire soon or has outdated identity information.
Revoke a Credential
In this use case, an administrator needs to revoke an active credential.
- An employee or contractor may have attempted to use a credential and input the PIN information incorrectly several times up to an agency-defined limit and has locked their account or credential. The employee or contractor requests a PIN reset. The employee or contractor is directed to an unlock service; has to verify information again to prove they are the same person issued the original credential; and follows prompts to unlock their credential, generating a new PIN in the process.
- Reset - I want to verify the identity of an employee or contractor that has already been issued a credential and reset their PIN or password so that they can continue to access enterprise resources.
- Renew - I want to verify the identity and eligibility of an employee or contractor, who has a previously issued credential that is near expiration, so that they may be issued a new enterprise credential to maintain their ability to access enterprise resources.
- Revoke - I want to remove access to enterprise resources for an employee or contractor so that they can no longer use the protected resource.
Use Case 7. Grant Access

This use case describes the steps to authenticate individuals and authorize access to agency services. Agency services can be anything from applications and files to physical facilities.
In this use case, an Access Control System (ACS) Administrator needs to grant access to an employee or contractor who has an enterprise identity and active credential and needs to access a logical or physical resource. These steps assume the employee or contractor already has credentials to support authentication as well as the access entitlements to support authorization decisions.
- Authentication - I want to verify the claimed unique identity of a given employee or contractor so that the system can verify the right individual is attempting to access an agency service.
- Authorization - I want to allow access for only employees and contractors that meet established requirements so that only the people who should have access do have access.

An employee on the financial review team attempts to access a government financial application that is secured by a single sign-on (SSO) solution. The employee clicks a link to the financial application and is redirected to the SSO portal. The employee authenticates using his/her provided credential, which the SSO determines to be valid. The SSO solution or the financial application system finds the employee’s enterprise identity account and compares the roles assigned to those allowed by the financial application. The resulting determination is that the employee has authenticated to the required assurance level and has the appropriate entitlements to access the system and is subsequently logged on.
Use Case 8. Accept Federation Assertions

Federal employees and contractors often need to access protected services managed by other federal agencies. Federation is the means by which an agency can accept authentication assertions and associated identity attributes from systems within their agency and at other agencies. This allows federal employees and contractors from across agencies to access protected resources and streamlines the user’s experience.
Agencies can pass assertions to share attributes about employees and contractors.
In this use case, an employee or contractor from Agency A attempts to access a federated service at Agency B. This use case assumes the employee or contractor already has an account or entitlements to access resources at Agency B, or that they will be provisioned.

- I want to allow other federal agencies’ employees and contractors (who meet specific requirements) to access some of my agency’s resources, which facilitates cross-government collaboration and information sharing.
- An employee or contractor from Agency A visits a shared service operated by Agency B to service all federal government users. At the homepage, the employee/contractor selects their Agency A icon and is redirected to their Agency A SSO portal. They log in using their Agency A managed credentials and are redirected back to the Agency B shared service.

IDManagement.gov
An official website of the General Services Administration
This site is a collaboration between GSA and the Federal CIO Council. It is managed by the Identity Assurance and Trusted Access Division in the GSA Office of Government-wide Policy.
AI-powered marketing and sales reach new heights with generative AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in marketing and sales. And now, with the ongoing step-change evolution of generative AI (gen AI), we’re seeing the use of open-source platforms penetrating to the sales frontlines, along with rising investment by sales-tech players in gen AI innovations. Given the accelerating complexity and speed of doing business in a digital-first world, these technologies are becoming essential tools.
Inevitably, this will impact how you operate—and how you connect with and serve your customers. In fact, it’s probably already doing so. Forward-thinking C-suite leaders are considering how to adjust to this new landscape. Here, we outline the marketing and sales opportunities (and risks) in this dynamic field and suggest productive paths forward.
Our research suggests that a fifth of current sales-team functions could be automated.
How AI is reshaping marketing and sales
AI is poised to disrupt marketing and sales in every sector. This is the result of shifts in consumer sentiment alongside rapid technological change.
Omnichannel is table stakes
Across industries, engagement models are changing: today’s customers want everything, everywhere, and all the time. While they still desire an even mix of traditional, remote, and self-service channels (including face-to-face, inside sales, and e-commerce), we see continued growth in customer preference for online ordering and reordering.
Winning companies—those increasing their market share by at least 10 percent annually—tend to utilize advanced sales technology; build hybrid sales teams and capabilities; tailor strategies for third-party and company-owned marketplaces; achieve e-commerce excellence across the entire funnel; and deliver hyper-personalization (unique messages for individual decision makers based on their needs, profile, behaviors, and interactions—both past and predictive).
Step changes are occurring in digitization and automation
What is generative ai.
Many of us are already familiar with online AI chatbots and image generators, using them to create convincing pictures and text at astonishing speed. This is the great power of generative AI, or gen AI: it utilizes algorithms to generate new content—writing, images, or audio—from training data.
To do this, gen AI uses deep-learning models called foundation models (FMs). FMs are pre-trained on massive datasets and the algorithms they support are adaptable to a wide variety of downstream tasks, including content generation. Gen AI can be trained, for example, to predict the next word in a string of words and can generalize that ability to multiple text-generation tasks, such as writing articles, jokes, or code.
In contrast, “traditional” AI is trained on a single task with human supervision, using data specific to that task; it can be fine-tuned to reach high precision, but must be retrained for each new use case. Thus gen AI represents an enormous step change in power, sophistication, and utility—and a fundamental shift in our relationship to artificial intelligence.
AI technology is evolving at pace. It is becoming increasingly easy and less costly to implement, while offering ever-accelerating complexity and speed that far exceeds human capacity. Our research suggests that a fifth of current sales-team functions could be automated. In addition, new frontiers are opening with the rise of gen AI (see sidebar “What is generative AI?”). Furthermore, venture capital investment in AI has grown 13-fold over the last ten years. 1 Nestor Maslej et al., “The AI Index 2023 annual report,” AI Index Steering Committee, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, April 2023. This has led to an explosion of “usable” data (data that can be used to formulate insights and suggest tangible actions) and accessible technology (such as increased computation power and open-source algorithms). Vast, and growing, amounts of data are now available for foundation-model training, and since 2012 there’s been a millionfold increase in computation capacity—doubling every three to four months. 2 Cliff Saran, “Stanford University finds that AI is outpacing Moore’s Law,” Computer Weekly, December 12, 2019; Risto Miikkulainen, “Creative AI through evolutionary computation: Principles and examples,” SN Computer Science, 2(3): 163, March 23, 2001.
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What does gen ai mean for marketing and sales.
The rise of AI, and particularly gen AI, has potential for impact in three areas of marketing and sales: customer experience (CX), growth, and productivity.
For example, in CX, hyper-personalized content and offerings can be based on individual customer behavior, persona, and purchase history. Growth can be accelerated by leveraging AI to jumpstart top-line performance, giving sales teams the right analytics and customer insights to capture demand. Additionally, AI can boost sales effectiveness and performance by offloading and automating many mundane sales activities, freeing up capacity to spend more time with customers and prospective customers (while reducing cost to serve). In all these actions, personalization is key. AI coupled with company-specific data and context has enabled consumer insights at the most granular level, allowing B2C lever personalization through targeted marketing and sales offerings. Winning B2B companies go beyond account-based marketing and disproportionately use hyper-personalization in their outreach.
Bringing gen AI to life in the customer journey
There are many gen AI-specific use cases across the customer journey that can drive impact:
A gen AI sales use case: Dynamic audience targeting and segmentation
Gen AI can combine and analyze large amounts of data—such as demographic information, existing customer data, and market trends—to identify additional audience segments. Its algorithms then enable businesses to create personalized outreach content, easily and at scale.
Instead of spending time researching and creating audience segments, a marketer can leverage gen AI’s algorithms to identify segments with unique traits that may have been overlooked in existing customer data. Without knowing every detail about these segments, they can then ask a gen AI tool to draft automatically tailored content such as social media posts and landing pages. Once these have been refined and reviewed, the marketer and a sales leader can use gen AI to generate further content such as outreach templates for a matching sales campaign to reach prospects.
Embracing these techniques will require some openness to change. Organizations will require a comprehensive and aggregated dataset (such as an operational data lake that pulls in disparate sources) to train a gen AI model that can generate relevant audience segments and content. Once trained, the model can be operationalized within commercial systems to streamline workflows while being continuously refined by agile processes.
Lastly, the commercial organizational structure and operating model may need to be adjusted to ensure appropriate levels of risk oversight are in place and performance assessments align to the new ways of working.
- At the top of the funnel, gen AI surpasses traditional AI-driven lead identification and targeting that uses web scraping and simple prioritization. Gen AI’s advanced algorithms can leverage patterns in customer and market data to segment and target relevant audiences . With these capabilities, businesses can efficiently analyze and identify high-quality leads, leading to more effective, tailored lead-activation campaigns (see sidebar “A gen AI sales use case: Dynamic audience targeting and segmentation”). Additionally, gen AI can optimize marketing strategies through A/B testing of various elements such as page layouts, ad copy, and SEO strategies, leveraging predictive analytics and data-driven recommendations to ensure maximum return on investment. These actions can continue through the customer journey, with gen AI automating lead-nurturing campaigns based on evolving customer patterns.
- Within the sales motion, gen AI goes beyond initial sales-team engagement, providing continuous critical support throughout the entire sales process, from proposal to deal closure. With its ability to analyze customer behavior, preferences, and demographics, gen AI can generate personalized content and messaging. From the beginning, it can assist with hyper-personalized follow-up emails at scale and contextual chatbot support . It can also act as a 24/7 virtual assistant for each team member, offering tailored recommendations, reminders, and feedback, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates. As the deal progresses, gen AI can provide real-time negotiation guidance and predictive insights based on comprehensive analysis of historical transaction data, customer behavior, and competitive pricing.
- There are many gen AI use cases after the customer signs on the dotted line, including onboarding and retention. When a new customer joins, gen AI can provide a warm welcome with personalized training content , highlighting relevant best practices. A chatbot functionality can provide immediate answers to customer questions and enhance training materials for future customers. Gen AI can also offer sales leadership with real-time next-step recommendations and continuous churn modeling based on usage trends and customer behavior. Additionally, dynamic customer-journey mapping can be utilized to identify critical touchpoints and drive customer engagement.
This revolutionary approach is transforming the landscape of marketing and sales, driving greater effectiveness and customer engagement from the very start of the customer journey.

Winning tomorrow’s car buyers using artificial intelligence in marketing and sales
Commercial leaders are optimistic—and reaping benefits.
We asked a group of commercial leaders to provide their perspective on use cases and the role of gen AI in marketing and sales more broadly. Notably, we found cautious optimism across the board: respondents anticipated at least moderate impact from each use case we suggested. In particular, these players are most enthusiastic about use cases in the early stages of the customer journey lead identification, marketing optimization, and personalized outreach (Exhibit 1).
These top three use cases are all focused on prospecting and lead generation, where we’re witnessing significant early momentum. This comes as no surprise, considering the vast amount of data on prospective customers available for analysis and the historical challenge of personalizing initial marketing outreach at scale.
Various players are already deploying gen AI use cases, but this is undoubtedly only scratching the surface. Our research found that 90 percent of commercial leaders expect to utilize gen AI solutions “often” over the next two years (Exhibit 2).
Our research found that 90 percent of commercial leaders expect to utilize gen AI solutions “often” over the next two years.
Overall, the most effective companies are prioritizing and deploying advanced sales tech, building hybrid teams, and enabling hyper-personalization. And they’re maximizing their use of e-commerce and third-party marketplaces through analytics and AI. At successful companies, we’ve found:
- There is a clearly defined AI vision and strategy.
- More than 20 percent of digital budgets are invested in AI-related technologies.
- Teams of data scientists are employed to run algorithms to inform rapid pricing strategy and optimize marketing and sales.
- Strategists are looking to the future and outlining simple gen AI use cases.
Such trailblazers are already realizing the potential of gen AI to elevate their operations.
Our research indicates that players that invest in AI are seeing a revenue uplift of 3 to 15 percent and a sales ROI uplift of 10 to 20 percent.
Anticipating and mitigating risks in gen AI
While the business case for artificial intelligence is compelling, the rate of change in AI technology is astonishingly fast—and not without risk. When commercial leaders were asked about the greatest barriers limiting their organization’s adoption of AI technologies, internal and external risk were at the top of the list.
From IP infringement to data privacy and security, there are a number of issues that require thoughtful mitigation strategies and governance. The need for human oversight and accountability is clear, and may require the creation of new roles and capabilities to fully capitalize on opportunities ahead.
In addition to immediate actions, leaders can start thinking strategically about how to invest in AI commercial excellence for the long term. It will be important to identify which use cases are table stakes, and which can help you differentiate your position in the market. Then prioritize based on impact and feasibility.
The AI landscape is evolving very quickly, and winners today may not be viable tomorrow. Small start-ups are great innovators but may not be able to scale as needed or produce sales-focused use cases that meet your needs. Test and iterate with different players, but pursue partnerships strategically based on sales-related innovation, rate of innovation versus time to market, and ability to scale.
AI is changing at breakneck speed, and while it’s hard to predict the course of this revolutionary tech, it’s sure to play a key role in future marketing and sales. Leaders in the field are succeeding by turning to gen AI to maximize their operations, taking advantage of advances in personalization and internal sales excellence. How will your industry react?
Richelle Deveau is a partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office, Sonia Joseph Griffin is an associate partner in the Atlanta office, where Steve Reis is a senior partner.
The authors wish to thank Michelle Court-Reuss, Will Godfrey, Russell Groves, Maxim Lampe, Siamak Sarvari, and Zach Stone for their contributions to this article.
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Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI
By Arun Ulagaratchagan Corporate Vice President, Azure Data
Posted on May 23, 2023 10 min read

Today’s world is awash with data—ever-streaming from the devices we use, the applications we build, and the interactions we have. Organizations across every industry have harnessed this data to digitally transform and gain competitive advantages. And now, as we enter a new era defined by AI, this data is becoming even more important.
Generative AI and language model services, such as Azure OpenAI Service, are enabling customers to use and create everyday AI experiences that are reinventing how employees spend their time. Powering organization-specific AI experiences requires a constant supply of clean data from a well-managed and highly integrated analytics system. But most organizations’ analytics systems are a labyrinth of specialized and disconnected services.
And it’s no wonder given the massively fragmented data and AI technology market with hundreds of vendors and thousands of services. Customers must stitch together a complex set of disconnected services from multiple vendors themselves and incur the costs and burdens of making these services function together.
Introducing Microsoft Fabric
Today we are unveiling Microsoft Fabric —an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that brings together all the data and analytics tools that organizations need. Fabric integrates technologies like Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI into a single unified product, empowering data and business professionals alike to unlock the potential of their data and lay the foundation for the era of AI.
Watch a quick overview:

What sets Microsoft Fabric apart?
Fabric is an end-to-end analytics product that addresses every aspect of an organization’s analytics needs. But there are five areas that really set Fabric apart from the rest of the market:
1. Fabric is a complete analytics platform
Every analytics project has multiple subsystems. Every subsystem needs a different array of capabilities, often requiring products from multiple vendors. Integrating these products can be a complex, fragile, and expensive endeavor.
With Fabric, customers can use a single product with a unified experience and architecture that provides all the capabilities required for a developer to extract insights from data and present it to the business user. And by delivering the experience as software as a service (SaaS), everything is automatically integrated and optimized, and users can sign up within seconds and get real business value within minutes.
Fabric empowers every team in the analytics process with the role-specific experiences they need, so data engineers, data warehousing professionals, data scientists, data analysts, and business users feel right at home.

Fabric comes with seven core workloads:
- Data Factory (preview) provides more than 150 connectors to cloud and on-premises data sources, drag-and-drop experiences for data transformation, and the ability to orchestrate data pipelines.
- Synapse Data Engineering (preview) enables great authoring experiences for Spark, instant start with live pools, and the ability to collaborate.
- Synapse Data Science (preview) provides an end-to-end workflow for data scientists to build sophisticated AI models, collaborate easily, and train, deploy, and manage machine learning models.
- Synapse Data Warehousing (preview) provides a converged lake house and data warehouse experience with industry-leading SQL performance on open data formats.
- Synapse Real-Time Analytics (preview) enables developers to work with data streaming in from the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, telemetry, logs, and more, and analyze massive volumes of semi-structured data with high performance and low latency.
- Power BI in Fabric provides industry-leading visualization and AI-driven analytics that enable business analysts and business users to gain insights from data. The Power BI experience is also deeply integrated into Microsoft 365, providing relevant insights where business users already work.
- Data Activator (coming soon) provides real-time detection and monitoring of data and can trigger notifications and actions when it finds specified patterns in data—all in a no-code experience.
You can try these experiences today by signing up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial .
2. Fabric is lake-centric and open
Today’s data lakes can be messy and complicated, making it hard for customers to create, integrate, manage, and operate data lakes. And once they are operational, multiple data products using different proprietary data formats on the same data lake can cause significant data duplication and concerns about vendor lock-in.
OneLake—The OneDrive for data
Fabric comes with a SaaS, multi-cloud data lake called OneLake that is built-in and automatically available to every Fabric tenant. All Fabric workloads are automatically wired into OneLake, just like all Microsoft 365 applications are wired into OneDrive. Data is organized in an intuitive data hub, and automatically indexed for discovery, sharing, governance, and compliance.
OneLake serves developers, business analysts, and business users alike, helping eliminate pervasive and chaotic data silos created by different developers provisioning and configuring their own isolated storage accounts. Instead, OneLake provides a single, unified storage system for all developers, where discovery and sharing of data are easy with policy and security settings enforced centrally. At the API layer, OneLake is built on and fully compatible with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLSg2), instantly tapping into ADLSg2’s vast ecosystem of applications, tools, and developers.
A key capability of OneLake is “Shortcuts.” OneLake allows easy sharing of data between users and applications without having to move and duplicate information unnecessarily. Shortcuts allow OneLake to virtualize data lake storage in ADLSg2, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Google Storage (coming soon), enabling developers to compose and analyze data across clouds.
Open data formats across analytics offerings
Fabric is deeply committed to open data formats across all its workloads and tiers. Fabric treats Delta on top of Parquet files as a native data format that is the default for all workloads. This deep commitment to a common open data format means that customers need to load the data into the lake only once and all the workloads can operate on the same data, without having to separately ingest it. It also means that OneLake supports structured data of any format and unstructured data, giving customers total flexibility.
By adopting OneLake as our store and Delta and Parquet as the common format for all workloads, we offer customers a data stack that’s unified at the most fundamental level. Customers do not need to maintain different copies of data for databases, data lakes, data warehousing, business intelligence, or real-time analytics. Instead, a single copy of the data in OneLake can directly power all the workloads.
Managing data security (table, column, and row levels) across different data engines can be a persistent nightmare for customers. Fabric will provide a universal security model that is managed in OneLake, and all engines enforce it uniformly as they process queries and jobs. This model is coming soon.
3. Fabric is powered by AI
We are infusing Fabric with Azure OpenAI Service at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling developers to leverage the power of generative AI against their data and assisting business users to find insights in their data. With Copilot in Microsoft Fabric in every data experience, users can use conversational language to create dataflows and data pipelines, generate code and entire functions, build machine learning models, or visualize results. Customers can even create their own conversational language experiences that combine Azure OpenAI Service models and their data and publish them as plug-ins.
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric builds on our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. Copilot inherits an organization’s security, compliance, and privacy policies. Microsoft does not use organizations’ tenant data to train the base language models that power Copilot.
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric will be coming soon. Stay tuned to the Microsoft Fabric blog for the latest updates and public release date for Copilot in Microsoft Fabric.
4. Fabric empowers every business user
Customers aspire to drive a data culture where everyone in their organization is making better decisions based on data. To help our customers foster this culture, Fabric deeply integrates with the Microsoft 365 applications people use every day.
Power BI is a core part of Fabric and is already infused across Microsoft 365. Through Power BI’s deep integrations with popular applications such as Excel, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, and SharePoint, relevant data from OneLake is easily discoverable and accessible to users right from Microsoft 365—helping customers drive more value from their data
With Fabric, you can turn your Microsoft 365 apps into hubs for uncovering and applying insights. For example, users in Microsoft Excel can directly discover and analyze data in OneLake and generate a Power BI report with a click of a button. In Teams, users can infuse data into their everyday work with embedded channels, chat, and meeting experiences. Business users can bring data into their presentations by embedding live Power BI reports directly in Microsoft PowerPoint. Power BI is also natively integrated with SharePoint, enabling easy sharing and dissemination of insights. And with Microsoft Graph Data Connect (preview), Microsoft 365 data is natively integrated into OneLake so customers can unlock insights on their customer relationships, business processes, security and compliance, and people productivity.
5. Fabric reduces costs through unified capacities
Today’s analytics systems typically combine products from multiple vendors in a single project. This results in computing capacity provisioned in multiple systems like data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, and business intelligence. When one of the systems is idle, its capacity cannot be used by another system causing significant wastage.
Purchasing and managing resources is massively simplified with Fabric. Customers can purchase a single pool of computing that powers all Fabric workloads. With this all-inclusive approach, customers can create solutions that leverage all workloads freely without any friction in their experience or commerce. The universal compute capacities significantly reduce costs, as any unused compute capacity in one workload can be utilized by any of the workloads.
Explore how our customers are already using Microsoft Fabric
Ferguson .
Ferguson is a leading distributor of plumbing, HVAC, and waterworks supplies, operating across North America. And by using Fabric to consolidate their analytics stack into a unified solution, they are hoping to reduce their delivery time and improve efficiency.
“ Microsoft Fabric reduces the delivery time by removing the overhead of using multiple disparate services. By consolidating the necessary data provisioning, transformation, modeling, and analysis services into one UI, the time from raw data to business intelligence is significantly reduced. Fabric meaningfully impacts Ferguson’s data storage, engineering, and analytics groups since all these workloads can now be done in the same UI for faster delivery of insights .” —George Rasco, Principal Database Architect, Ferguson
See Fabric in action at Ferguson:
T-Mobile
T-Mobile, one of the largest providers of wireless communications services in the United States, is focused on driving disruption that creates innovation and better customer experiences in wireless and beyond. With Fabric, T-Mobile hopes they can take their platform and data-driven decision-making to the next level.
“ T-Mobile loves our customers and providing them with new Un-Carrier benefits! We think that Fabric’s upcoming abilities will help us eliminate data silos, making it easier for us to unlock new insights into how we show our customers even more love. Querying across the lakehouse and warehouse from a single engine—that’s a game changer. Spark compute on-demand, rather than waiting for clusters to spin up, is a huge improvement for both standard data engineering and advanced analytics. It saves three minutes on every job, and when you’re running thousands of jobs an hour, that really adds up. And being able to easily share datasets across the company is going to eliminate so much data duplication. We’re really looking forward to these new features .” —Geoffrey Freeman, MTS, Data Solutions and Analytics, T-Mobile
Aon
Aon provides professional services and management consulting services to a vast global network of customers. With the help of Fabric, Aon hopes that they can consolidate more of their current technology stack and focus on adding more value to their clients.
“ What’s most exciting to me about Fabric is simplifying our existing analytics stack. Currently, there are so many different PaaS services across the board that when it comes to modernization efforts for many developers, Fabric helps simplify that. We can now spend less time building infrastructure and more time adding value to our business .” —Boby Azarbod, Data Services Lead, Aon
What happens to current Microsoft analytics solutions?
Existing Microsoft products such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Data Explorer will continue to provide a robust, enterprise-grade platform as a service (PaaS) solution for data analytics. Fabric represents an evolution of those offerings in the form of a simplified SaaS solution that can connect to existing PaaS offerings. Customers will be able to upgrade from their current products into Fabric at their own pace.
Get started with Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is currently in preview. Try out everything Fabric has to offer by signing up for the free trial—no credit card information is required. Everyone who signs up gets a fixed Fabric trial capacity, which may be used for any feature or capability from integrating data to creating machine learning models. Existing Power BI Premium customers can simply turn on Fabric through the Power BI admin portal. After July 1, 2023, Fabric will be enabled for all Power BI tenants.

Microsoft Fabric resources
If you want to learn more about Microsoft Fabric, consider:
- Signing up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial .
- Visiting the Microsoft Fabric website .
- Data Factory experience in Fabric blog
- Synapse Data Engineering experience in Fabric blog
- Synapse Data Science experience in Fabric blog
- Synapse Data Warehousing experience in Fabric blog
- Synapse Real-Time Analytics experience in Fabric blog
- Power BI announcement blog
- Data Activator experience in Fabric blog
- Administration and governance in Fabric blog
- OneLake in Fabric blog
- Fabric event streams blog
- Microsoft 365 data integration in Fabric blog
- Dataverse and Microsoft Fabric integration blog
- Exploring the Fabric technical documentation .
- Reading the free e-book on getting started with Fabric .
- Exploring Fabric through the Guided Tour .
- Joining the Fabric community to post your questions, share your feedback, and learn from others.
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MoSCoW Prioritization
What is moscow prioritization.
MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements.
The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”
What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?
Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.
You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.
How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?
Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.
At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.
Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.
With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.
Start prioritizing your roadmap
Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives
As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.
The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”
2. Should-have initiatives
Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.
“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.
3. Could-have initiatives
Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.
So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.
4. Will not have (this time)
One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).
Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame.
Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.
How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?
Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example:
Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.
What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete.
Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.
A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.
Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.
Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.
What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?
Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.
1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.
One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.
Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .
2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.
To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.
For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.
One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders.
3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.
Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives.
One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.
But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.
When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?
MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.
Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.
What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?
If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.
1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.
Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.
You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:
- Weighted scoring
- Value vs. complexity
- Buy-a-feature
- Opportunity scoring
For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .
2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.
To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context.
At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss.
3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.
MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects.
The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.
Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made.
If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.
Related Terms
2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model
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- THEMATIC ISSUE ON URBAN SOILS
- Published: 01 February 2022
Research on Soils of Urban Areas: Analysis of Methodological Aspects and Approaches (a Case Study of Moscow City)
- O. Yu. Goncharova 1 ,
- O. V. Semenyuk 1 &
- G. V. Stoma 1
Moscow University Soil Science Bulletin volume 76 , pages 169–176 ( 2021 ) Cite this article
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This article discusses the existing methodological approaches used in Russian and foreign studies of urban soils. Methods for studying the soil cover as an object of landscape design, considering its formation and functioning, are analyzed by the example of the city of Moscow. Information on the territorial and functional organization of urban space is given. From the point of view of methodological approaches to the study of urban soils, it is proposed to specify them into two groups: uneven-aged soils with filled surface horizons from various recultivants formed according to design documents, and natural surface-transformed soils without a filled layer. The features of methodological approaches for studying each soil group are considered. It is noted that the composition of material from which urban soils are formed exerts a significant impact on their structure, properties, and functioning. The use of ground materials of different composition and properties for the formation of the upper part of urban soils, sometimes an unknown history of their functioning and use, and numerous possible violations, cause extremely high and most often unsystematic spatial and time variability of urban soils. The interest of the scientific community in the qualitative assessment of the urban environment is increasing, and, in this connection, the elaboration of methods for studying the resulting ecological functions of urban soils, using integral indicators, as well as the development of approaches, methods, and technologies for creating urban soils that meet the criteria of green environmental management, are the most promising.
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This work was performed within the framework of state assignment in research and development theme no. 121040800321-4 Indicators of Transformation of Biogeochemical “Cycles of Biogenic Elements in Natural and Anthropogenic Ecosystems” and within the framework of the “Development Program of the Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School of Lomonosov Moscow State University” The Future of the Planet and Global Environmental Changes.
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O. Yu. Goncharova, O. V. Semenyuk & G. V. Stoma
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Goncharova, O.Y., Semenyuk, O.V. & Stoma, G.V. Research on Soils of Urban Areas: Analysis of Methodological Aspects and Approaches (a Case Study of Moscow City). Moscow Univ. Soil Sci. Bull. 76 , 169–176 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3103/S0147687421040037
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Received : 19 March 2021
Revised : 25 May 2021
Accepted : 10 June 2021
Published : 01 February 2022
Issue Date : October 2021
DOI : https://doi.org/10.3103/S0147687421040037
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Knowledge 2023 - ServiceNow looks beyond general purpose generative AI to domain-specific use cases

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ServiceNow has this week revealed how it is planning to capitalize on the recent rapid advancements seen in the field of generative AI, using large language models (LLMs) - showcasing some of the potential use cases live on stage during its second Knowledge 2023 keynote in Las Vegas this week.
diginomica outlined previously how the workflow vendor has announced partnerships with Microsoft’s Azure Open AI Service and OpenAI’s API LLMs, which is something a number of other B2B software vendors have prioritized too. However, perhaps more interestingly, ServiceNow doesn’t see these (what it calls ‘general purpose AI tools’) as fundamental to its future success of the platform.
They’re useful, to some extent, it says. But what it is more interested in is domain specific LLMs, ones that it builds itself using data from the Now platform.
To that end, ServiceNow today announced a partnership with NVIDIA to develop enterprise-grade generative AI capabilities, using NVIDIA software, services and infrastructure, to create its own custom LLMs trained specifically for the Now platform.
The two companies said that the partnership, and the planned LLMs, will see new generative AI use cases for the enterprise, including for IT departments, customer service teams, employees and developers.
Speaking with media and analysts this week, CJ Desai, ServiceNow’s Chief Product Officer, said:
OpenAI is a great piece of technology, a great group of people, but that is a very general purpose AI. So in parallel we have been building very specific LLMs for ServiceNow use cases. Why does that matter? You get higher accuracy for ServiceNow use cases, you have data privacy for our customers’ data, and these models will provide a lot more insight - because we are going to train them for ServiceNow specific work.
The use cases
As observers of the B2B technology world, diginomica has sat through thousands of product demos over our years in the industry. And if we are being honest, it’s rare that one of these impresses or surprises. Usually it’s an iteration of the status quo, meeting users where their expectations are.
However, some of the demos during the keynote at Knowledge 2023 felt innovative. And whilst they are demos, on stage at a conference aimed at impressing thousands of people, quite far removed from the reality on the ground, they certainly showcased the art of the possible when considering the interplay between workflow/process automation (ServiceNow’s bread and butter) and generative AI (particularly conversational AI).
Desai showed both how the general purpose LLM could be used on the Now platform, as well as the domain specific AI opportunity.
One example saw a customer of Starbucks use a LLM-based chatbot to say that their coffee order had been placed at the wrong location for pick up, asking it ‘what can be done about that’? The response was helpful, giving the user two options: a refund or to divert the order to a new location. Once the user selected which one they wanted, the conversational AI kicked the Now platform into gear and carried out the process on the back-end.
However, the more impressive examples showcased how a ServiceNow administrator at a customer organization could ask for case summaries of problems that had occurred that day, and would then provide recommended actions (generated by the AI), which took into account company procedures. The AI then summarized all this activity and put it into the notes field. What would have taken a significant amount of human intervention, understanding, and content creation, which was done by generative AI in a matter of seconds.
Finally, Desai showcased a domain specific (for ServiceNow) text to code example, where someone looking to generate code for the Now platform could be delivered what they needed simply by typing something along the lines of “// query incidents older than two years”, with the code populating the screen in seconds. This final example resulted in a huge cheer from the audience, unprompted.
Commenting on these domain specific examples, Desai said:
Domain specific LLMs - if you think about our biggest product line, ITSM, we already know why employees of our customers use ITSM. If we can have LLMs that we take from our quality partners, we train for an ITSM specific use case, and we run it for that specific customer, that’s when we get the high test value for generative AI. That’s what we are solving for, first. Can we have HR specific LLMs? Customer service LLMs? IT specific LLMs? And text to code…we know how to code on ServiceNow really, really well. Think about a high school graduate who wants to write ServiceNow specific code to modify a business rule. They can do that with text to code that we have trained for that domain specific LLM. Right now OpenAI scans the internet and whatever code exists on the internet, they will try to help you code with it. That’s interesting…but not really. For higher quality code, higher throughput, higher business rules, you want our top engineers to train that model.
It’s obviously very early days and there’s lots of detail that we still need clarity on - particularly around how the models are developed between ServiceNow, NVIDIA and customers. Where the data sits, what data is used, and whether those models are owned by the customer, or the vendors, I’m not entirely sure just yet. Also the timelines for all of this are still uncertain. But seeing those live demonstrations, it was hard to deny the value that could be quickly extracted across an enterprise, if these LLMs were used at scale. The reduction in time needed to carry out the tasks showcased was really quite astounding - not to mention how this could enable customers to do things differently. It’s going to be interesting to see how this develops - and lots of our concerns about AI, particularly how it impacts the workforce, remain - but it’s clear that ServiceNow recognizes that enterprise expertise is valuable.

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SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management and Utilities – Case 3: Billing Plans
In my introduction post I described the flexible possibilities of integration between BRIM (CI more in particular) and Utilities. Over the next few weeks, I will show some demo use cases I created for customers to highlight the flexibility of BRM.
The third case is the following situation: as an extra service, we offer to install a battery for customers. The customer pays a monthly rental fee. We want to add this fee seamlessly on his commodity invoice.
In this blog, you will find some customizing snippets to show how the integration between ISU and Convergent Invoicing is done, and at the end you will find the demo screens.
Customizing Snippets
Billing cycle.
You must define the billing cycle for your billing plan. Depending on the requirement there is a big flexibility on the billing cycle: (X-)daily, (X-)weekly, (X-)monthly or yearly. The start date and end date of the billing cycle can be customized to use fixed parameters, or use information stored at the Contract Account level or the input by an external party. It is also possible to customize an adjustment of the first period according to following rules:
- Reduce it (so the first period will always be sent)
- Extend it (so the first period will be added to the second period always)
- Reduce it using a minimal length defined in days (if the first period is less then the number of days defined, the period will be added to the second period, otherwise the first period will be sent.
This customizing can be found under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable -> Convergent Invoicing -> Basic Functions-> Scheduling-> Define Billing Cycle

Example of a Billing Cycle
Billing Plan Types
The billing plan Type is used to categorize the Billing Plans on a Header level. Here the Billable Item Class can be defined, and the Billing Plan Category is defined. This customizing can be found under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable -> Convergent Invoicing -> Enhanced Functions-> Billing Plans-> Define Billing Plan Type
Billing Plan Item Type
Here all the customising is done on item level. Multiple items can be added to one billing plan. Here the identification of the Billable Item Type can be done. Also the rules for the calculation baseline and the start date can be altered and overwritten. This customizing can be found under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable -> Convergent Invoicing -> Enhanced Functions-> Billing Plans->D efine Billing Plan Item Type

example of a Billing Plan Type
Assignment of Item Types to Billing Plan Types
Here the allowed combinations are defined between the Billing Plan Type and the Billing Plan Item Type. This customizing can be found under Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable -> Convergent Invoicing -> Enhanced Functions-> Billing Plans->Assignment of Item Types to Billing Plan Types

Example of an Assignment
Demo screens
Manage billing plan.
The creation and management of billing plans can also be done via a FIORI application. In the initial screen, when choosing “Create”, the Billing Plan Type that was customized can be selected for a specific Business Partner or Contract account.

The following step is to configure the item or the items linked to the Billing Plan. The configured Billing Plan Item Type and the Billing Cycle must be defined, together with the amount of the Billing Plan. This is enough to create the Billing plan. Once created, the Billing Plan still has to be released first before use.

Once released, we can now generate a billing request. We do this via transaction FKKBIXBIP_S or the Fiori app. As we take date 31.05.2023 as a keydate, this will generate one billing request. For the first period the amount is lower because of the incompleteness of the month. The amount only represents 16 days. The normal process as explained in my previous can now pick up. You can configure the Process Selection Control to only be picked up with the ISU Budget Billing Plans.

This wraps up the second case of BRIM handling. It shows how easy it is to integrate the GridFee with the ISU invoice. Do not hesitate to share your ideas in the comments!
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Bowel obstruction - ingested foreign body
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Citation, DOI, disclosures and case data
At the time the case was submitted for publication Leonardo Lustosa had no financial relationships to ineligible companies to disclose.
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History of coin ingestion.
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Metallic density object in keeping with a coin projecting over the epigastric region. Multiple air-fluid levels are noted, which suggests a bowel obstruction has occurred.
Case Discussion
The history of coin ingestion was corroborated by the radiographs.
Ingested foreign body management usually depends on its location. Foreign bodies within the gastric or small bowel region are usually managed with clinical observation.
Coins can oftentimes be managed non-operatively. However, in the present case, there were signs of bowel obstruction , and the case was referred to the pediatric surgeon for evaluation.
- Kramer R, Lerner D, Lin T et al. Management of Ingested Foreign Bodies in Children. Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition. 2015;60(4):562-74. doi:10.1097/mpg.0000000000000729
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Ingested foreign body management usually depends on its location. Foreign bodies within the gastric or small bowel region are usually managed with clinical observation. Coins can oftentimes be managed non-operatively. However, in the present case, there were signs of bowel obstruction, and the case was referred to the pediatric surgeon for ...