In the classical, rigid BPM world, according to Mastering the Unpredictable, processes are designed top down normally with a cost or industrialized focus. The process types here are straight-through processes, structured processes, and dynamic processes. Dynamic processes are interesting because they allow a bit of the flexibility we are looking for in the ACM world. This flexibility is reached using extracted rules for gateway decisions, using mid process event communication, or by reading lists of activities (for example, from Excel) that define a specific context.

This view is complemented by the bottom-up approach, which brings the people in. They have a more quality-based, adaptive focus, and system interactions are more emergent than designed. That's where social collaboration and case management meet in the middle with the dynamic processes.