Autonomous (or agentic) operations for most processes is the North Star for many enterprises. These hold the promise of adapting to the dynamic and unpredictable nature of real-world activity and help make connections that reduce software customizations while freeing workers for higher pursuits.
Deterministic workflow engines, robotic process automation (RPA) bots, and digital process automation (DPA) tools are not powerful enough to implement the complexities required for autonomous operations. This is why various automation technologies from different domains, combined with a process mindset, are required to move toward autonomous operations. At Forrester, we are calling this combination adaptive process orchestration (APO). We define it as:
An automation platform that uses AI agents and nondeterministic control flows, in addition to traditional deterministic control flows, to meet business goals, perform complex tasks, and make autonomous decisions.
Process orchestration platforms enable organizations to define, automate, and monitor end-to-end workflows, ensuring that tasks are executed in the correct sequence and that data is seamlessly transferred between systems. This can lead to significant improvements in productivity, agility, and customer responsiveness. At the same time, software vendors from the automation space — as well as large portfolio vendors — are investing in native process orchestration capabilities.
Adaptive process orchestration:
Supports the progression of AI agents and agentic AI frameworks, leveraging their unique blend of capabilities for strategic planning, complex scenario reasoning, and cross-component collaboration.
Focuses on long-running and/or complex business processes that drive ROI, utilizing external automation endpoints, traditional automation frameworks, and enterprise integration to achieve autonomous goals.
Supports five key capabilities for agentic process management: model option and constraint management; content and format processing; the ability to create AI agents; agentic orchestration; and governance, data, and IP protection.
Embraces the principles and architecture of the emerging automation fabric framework, unifying complementary automation applications, technologies, enterprise architectures, and governance models.
Adaptive process orchestration is an essential capability for:
Automation leaders intending to scale their enterprises’ efforts by combining existing automations with AI (including AI agents, agentic AI, ML models, and other capabilities).
Transformation leaders working towards autonomous operations.
Forrester is convinced that adaptive process orchestration is the next level of maturation in enterprise automation. Therefore, going forward we will not only dedicate qualitative research to this new software category, such as how automation vendors are pivoting to APO, how APO is different from RPA, DPA, and iPaaS, and how to select the right orchestration engine, but also evaluative research in this space. We will start with an adaptive process orchestration landscape report, which will hit the market by early Q2 2026, followed by an adaptive process orchestration Forrester Wave™, which will publish later in 2026.
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