Process Discovery

2. Process Discovery
1. The setting of process discovery.
1. Process analyst versus domain expert.
2. Three process discovery challenges.
3. Profile of a process analyst.

2. Discovery methods.
1. Evidence-based discovery.
2. Interview-based discovery.
3. Workshop-based discovery.

3. Process modeling method (we mentioned before).

4. Process model quality assurance.

1. Syntactic quality and verification.
2. Semantic quality and validation.
3. Pragmatic quality and certification.
4. Modeling guidelines.
 2. Process Discovery
The setting of process discovery:

• Process discovery is about gathering information about an

existing process and then organizing it (AS-IS model). So, it more
than just modeling the current status of business processes; modeling
is just a part.

• Modeling can be done if we have rich and enough information about a

business process.

• But gathering information is cumbersome and time consuming. So,

we need to define the setting (method) of how we gather information
effectively.
 2. Process Discovery
There are four phases for gathering information:

1. Defining the setting: it is about developing a team (group of people)

in an organization who will be responsible for working on a process.

2. Gathering information: the goal here is to understand the business

process. Different methods can be used in this phase.

3. Conduction the modeling: this phase is about developing of the

process model using any modeling languages such as PBMN2.0.

4. Assuring process model quality: the goal here is to make sure that
the resulted process models meet quality criteria (to trust in them).
 2. Process Discovery
• Usually, one or more process analysts are involved in the modeling
and analysis of business processes. Most of the cases, these analysts
are not familiar with details of business processes.

• So, the setting definition of the process discovery is important

because process analysts make sure of the commitment of different
domain experts who provide rich information on the process.

• A domain expert: is anybody who has knowledge about how the

interested process or activity works. Usually, the domain expert is
process participant but he can be process owner or manager.

• Suppliers and customers of a process can be considered as domain

experts.
 2. Process Discovery
• Jointly, all different domain experts should have insight of all
activities of the process.

• Process owner is the responsible for the commitment and

involvement of those domain experts.

• Process analyst VS domain experts:

– Can you model the student admission process? WHY?

• We distinguish between the role of a process analyst and the role of

a domain expert. Typically in the practice, we have one or few
process analysts and several domain experts.

• Process analysts and domain experts complement each other.

 2. Process Discovery
• Process analyst VS domain experts:

Aspect Process analyst Domain expert

Modeling skills Strong Limited

Process knowledge Limited Strong

 2. Process Discovery
• Three process discovery challenges:

1. Fragmental process knowledge: since a process is a set of

logically related activities which assigned to different specialized
participants, process analysts need to talk to different domain
experts who are responsible for different tasks of the process.

• Usually, domain experts have an abstract knowledge/understanding

about the overall process and very detailed knowledge of their
activity.

• Potential conflicts in the provided information have to be resolved.

– The rules of the process are not explicitly defined in details.
– Different and inconsistent assumptions may be exist.
 2. Process Discovery
• Because of fragmental process knowledge, the process discovery
may require several iterations.

• The process analyst receives input from all domain experts and
then propose solution for any inconsistencies; which needs
feedback and approval from domain experts.

2. Think of processes on a case level: domain experts explain and

describe their work for one specific case. Domain experts may have
problem to answer general questions about how a process works in
general.

• Process analysts need to organize and abstract knowledge from the

information provided by domain experts in such way that a
systematically defined process model can emerge.
 2. Process Discovery
• Therefore, it is important to ask some questions like:
– What happens if some tasks are completed?
– What if a certain conditions do or do not hold?
– What if certain deadlines are not met?

3. Not familiar with business process modeling: domain experts

are not trained to create process modeling and even not trained to
read process models that are created by others. This fact obstacles
the feedback to refine the process model.

• In this case, it is desire to show models and ask domain experts for
any corrections. The process analyst may explain the model in other
way such as natural language.
 2. Process Discovery
Profile of a process analyst:
• The skills of a process analyst play an important role in process
discovery. Process analysts can be described based on:
– their actual behavior in process analysis and
– the process resulting from their efforts.

• Process discovery belongs ill-defined problem. This means; it is not

exactly clear who of the domain experts have to be contacted;
which documentation can be utilized; and which agenda the
different stakeholders might have in mind.

• The way how expert analysts navigate through a project is strongly

influenced by experiences with previous projects. So, there is a
strong difference between the way how beginners and expert
analysts perform problem understanding and solving.
 2. Process Discovery
• In problem understanding, experts think of what are the things that
need to be achieved. In contrast, novices try to approach things in
a bottom-up fashion where they start by investigating materials
that are easily accessible and talk to people who readily to
respond.

• Expert analysts pay specific attention to the following:

1. Getting the right people on board.
2. Having a set of working hypotheses on how the process is
structured at different levels of details (set of questions and
assumptions to be discussed in the workshops or interview).
3. Identifying patterns in the information provided by domain
experts.
4. Paying attention to model layout; models have to be easy to
understand by stakeholders, and also valuable throughout the
process of creating the model. Expert also use the right level of
 2. Process Discovery
• Discovery methods:
1. Evidence-Based discovery: various pieces of evidence are
available for studying how an existing process works. Three
methods are available here:
a. Document analysis: it exploits documentation materials available that
can be related to an existing process.

b. Observation: in this method we follow the processing of individual

case in order to get an understanding of how a process works. The
process analyst can play active role of a customer or passive role of an
observer.

c. Automatic process discovery: understanding emerges from the

extensive operational support of business processes provided by various
information systems.
 2. Process Discovery
• Discovery methods:
2. Interview-Based discovery: it refers to methods that build on interviewing domain
experts about how a process is conducted. There are three challenges here:
1. The process knowledge is scattered across different domain experts.
2. Domain experts usually think in terms of individual cases.
3. Domain experts are often not familiar with process modeling languages.

• Interviews are conducted with different domain experts involved in the process.

• Interviews can be conducted by using forward or backward strategies. In these two,

process analyst should clarified which input is expected from previous upstream
activities, which decision are taken, and in which format the result of an activity are
forwarded to next party.

• Interviewing domain experts is conducting iteratively using free-form or structured

interviews.

• Do not focus only on “sunny day” scenario, but think of exceptions “rainy day”
scenario.
 2. Process Discovery
• Discovery methods:
3. Workshop-Based discovery: several participants, process owner,
and process analysts are involved in the workshop.

• The workshop needs facilitator who takes care of organizing the verbal
contributions of the involved people. The facilitator has to ensure that the
parole is balanced between different participants.

• Also tool operator is needed to directly enter the discussion results into
modeling tool.

• Workshops have the potential to resolve inconsistencies directly with all

involved parties.

• Workshop is desired to be used when there is no available information for

modeling the process.
 2. Process Discovery
• Discovery methods (strengths and limitation):

Aspect Evidence Interview Workshop

Objectivity High Medium-high Medium-high

Richness Medium High High

Time consumption Low-medium Medium Medium

Immediacy of Low High High

feedback
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Modeling method (incremental steps):
1. Identify the process Boundaries: the identification of the
boundaries is crucial for understanding the scope of a business
process. This means we need to identify the events that trigger a
process and events that identify possible outcomes of the process.

2. Identify Activities and events: the aim here is to identify main

activities. Also, we identify events that occur during the process
(intermediate events). We focus on main activities and events at
this stage, and add others at later stage when we get deep
understanding. These main activities may go through revisions.
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Modeling methods:

3. Identify resources and their handovers: it is about identifying who is

responsible for the defined activities in the previous step. This provides the
basis for developing pools and lanes.

• Notice that that the order of the activities are not defined yet.

• We need to identify those points in the process where work is handed over
from a resource to another and the sequence flow that indicate handover
points.

• This is important because participant being assigned a new task to conduct

usually has to make assumption about what has been completed before. So,
making these assumptions explicit is an important step in process discovery.

• Furthermore, handover points help to identify parts of the process which can
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Modeling methods:
4. Identify the control flow: this step identify when and why
activities and events are executed. Technically, we need to identify
order dependencies, decision points, repetition, and information
exchange between multiple pools.

5. Identify additional elements: the process model can be extended by

adding artifact, data objects, data store etc.
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Model Quality Assurance:
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Model Quality Assurance:
1. Syntactic quality and verification: syntactic quality relates to the goal of
producing a process model that conforms to syntactical rules (such as
PBMN2.0) and guidelines (to make sure consistency and comparability).

• Verification addresses formal properties of a model that can be checked

without knowing the real-world process. Here we differentiate between
structural and behavioral correctness.

• Structural correctness: relates to the types of elements that are used in the
model and how they are connected. E.g. activity has incoming and outgoing
arc.

• Behavioral correctness: relates to potential sequences of execution as

defined by the process model. E.g. endless loop etc.

• Using good tool can help in structural and behavioral correctness.

Structural correctness: Example
 Behavioural correctness: Example
If condition_1 is true, the instance cannot complete and activity B will be repeated
forever (livelock)

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 Behavioural correctness: Example
If c1 is true after executing A, or c2 is true after executing B, the instance cannot
complete (deadlock)

Note: this model also suffers from a dead activity (D)

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 Find the bugs…

Trivial
No Start Event F11 What?? Gateway
F1 F2 F9 F12

Split or Join? F10 May

deadlock

F6 No End Event

F3 F4 F7 F8

F5
Lack of
synchronization
Disconnected
node

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 2. Process Discovery
• Process Model Quality Assurance:
2. Semantic quality and validation: semantic quality relates to the
goal of producing process models that make true statement
about the considered domain, either for AS-IS or TO-BE the
process model.

• Validation: deals with checking the semantic of a model by

comparing it with the real-world business process. Here we
differentiate between validity and completeness.

• There are two essential aspects of semantic quality:

– Validity: means that all statements included in the model are correct and
relevant to the problem (to the reality).
– Completeness: means that the model contains all relevant statements on
a process that would be correct. Completeness is more difficult to assess.
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Model Quality Assurance:
3. Pragmatic quality and certification: pragmatic quality relates to
the goal of building a process of good usability.

• The challenge of pragmatic quality assessment is to predict

(prognosticate) the actual usage of a process model beforehand. The
focus here on how people interact with a model.

• Certification: is the activity of checking the pragmatic quality of a

process model by investigating its usage (usability). There are
several aspects of usability:
– Understandability - Maintainability - Learning
 2. Process Discovery
• Process Model Quality Assurance:
3. Pragmatic quality and certification:
• These aspects of usability include:
– Understandability: it relates to the fact how easy it is to read specific process
model.

– Maintainability: it points to the ease of applying changes to a process model.

– Learning: relates to the degree of how good a process model reveals how a
business process works in reality.

• Size, structural, complexity, graphical layout are characteristics that

influence the usability of a process model.

• There are two checks for understanding, maintainability, and learning:

1. Consistency between visual structure and logical structure.
2. Check meaningful of labels (naming conventions).
 2. Process Discovery
• Modeling guidelines and conventions: they are important for
safeguarding model consistency and integrity for bigger
modeling initiatives with several people involved. The goal is to
increase readability.

• Modeling guidelines: there is one set of guidelines called Seven

Process Modeling Guidelines (7PMG):

1. Use few elements in the model as possible.

2. Minimize the routing paths per element (incoming and outgoing arcs).
3. Use one start event and one end event.
4. Model as structured as possible (split - join).
5. Avoid OR-gateways as possible.
6. Use verb-object activity labels.
7. Decompose a model with more than 30 elements.