As processes become more intelligent, we will likely want to measure the level of intelligence, as I discussed in "How Smart Is your Business?"  Doing this will give organizations an idea where they are in a continuum of trying to become a smarter business over time. This month I will cover the "I" portion of the "ISAA" [Intelligent, Social, Agile, Autonomous] framework described in that column.

I propose the following five levels of raw intelligence that build on each other.

1.  Handling Expected Business Logic

policies/rules of expected (traditional) conditions and actions, typically handled by a preplanned process that leverages sets of orchestrated applications/services

These processes are the typical, traditional (ensconced) best and standard practices. This is action-oriented intelligence that is burned-in base intelligence that can change from time to time.

2.  Recognizing Emerging Events and Patterns

processes that can recognize events of opportunity or threat

These processes are a step above those processes that can simply act on normal conditions and expected exceptions.  Once an emerging event or pattern of events is recognized, a smarter process can notify (in cases where no action logic exists) and act with preplanned responses. Quite often, exceptions, opportunities, and threats can be taken advantage of in a timely fashion to the benefit of a business.

3.  Analyzing Alternatives with Poly Analytics

processes that can analyze emerging patterns — either on-demand or in-line

These processes are a step above those processes that can simply recognize situations that may require attention and action.  Processes that have analytics built-in to run in real time will have a better chance to intelligently anticipate and determine the next best action for processes in-flight.  Processes instrumented with multiple (poly) analytics will be smarter.

4.  Machine Assistance/Learning

processes that can suggest the right analytics to use in the right combination, based on goals that are set at the moment

These processes are a step above those processes that can simply analyze.  A process that can suggest actions, based upon its own analysis, to process operators and participants will be invaluable for situations where managed agility is required.

5.  Digital Direction

processes that can think and act on their own, within predetermined constraints

These processes are the ultimate in intelligent processes.  These could be goal models that are either static or dynamically-calculated and are assisted by intelligently-balanced analytics or heuristics. This kind of process will require great care in setting boundaries (for example, boundaries set up for non-violation).

Net; Net

There are definite levels of raw intelligence that processes can possess.  We will need to learn to utilize these various levels of intelligence over the coming years.

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