Business Process

Management
Process Discovery
Unit 4

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 Process Discovery
Definition:
As a act of gathering information about an
existing process and organising it in terms of
an as-is process model.
- Gathering and organising information
- Broader activity than modelling a process
- Enough information is gathered which is
time consuming and cumbersome in
practice 2
 1.Process Discovery - Phases
1. Defining the setting: This phase is dedicated to assembling a
team in a company that will be responsible for working on the
process.
2. Gathering information: This phase is concerned with building
an understanding of the process. Different discovery methods can
be used to acquire information on a process.
3. Conducting the modeling task: This phase deals with
organizing the creation of the process model. The modeling
method gives guidance for mapping out the process in a
systematic way.
4. Assuring process model quality: This phase aims to guarantee
that the resulting process models meet different quality criteria.
This phase is important for establishing trust in the process
model.

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 Who is involved?

Domain Expert Process

Analyst

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 Process Analyst Vs Domain
Expert
- Who is going to model the process?
- Eg.
1. The task of modelling the process of
signing a rental contract in your city.
2. The task of modelling the process of
getting a license plate for your car in a
country as a foreign resident

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 Process Analyst Vs Domain
Expert
Aspect Process Analyst Domain Expert

Modelling Skills Strong Limited

Process Knowledge Limited Strong

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Stakeholders in Detail

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Challenge 1: Fragmented
Process Knowledge
I make a photocopy before
handing over the
application

Why can‘t I directly

provide cash after
approval?
We bundle refinancing to
get better interest rates.

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 Challenge 2:
Domain Experts think on
Instance Level
”Every trip is different.“

”You cannot really compare. Our

customers go to different places in
different seasons using different
modes of transportation.“

”We can never do anything exactly

in the same way. There are so
many special conditions.“

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 Challenge 3:
Knowledge about Process
Modelling is rare
- ”Could you please tell me, whether this
diagram correctly shows your process?“

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 Expertise of Process
Analysts
Problem understanding
– Episodic knowledge available to get to root of problem
– Knowledge organisation helps to structure problem
Problem solving
– Trigger identification (problem-related cues)
– Hypothesis management (formulation and testing of hypotheses)
– Goal setting (what needs to be achieved next)
– Top-down strategy driven by analysis goals
Modelling skills
– Well-structured and laid out
– Systematically labelled
– Explicit start and end points of a process
– Appropriate granularity and decomposition

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 2.Process Discovery Methods
Evidence-based
– Document analysis
– Observation
– Process mining

Interview-based

Workshop-based
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 Document Analysis
Documents point to existing roles, activities and business objects

Formal documentation in terms of

– Organization chart
– Employment plan
– Quality certificate report
– Internal policies
– Glossaries and handbooks

Forms

Work instructions

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 Observation
• Observe what people do at their
workplace
• Trace business objects in the course of
their lifecycle
• Inspect the work environment

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Process Mining

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Interview-Based Discovery

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 Interviews
• Structured vs. unstructured interviews
• Assumption: analyst and stakeholder
share terminology
• Then, questions target at identifying
deviations from standard processing

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 Workshop Based Discovery
• Gather all key stakeholders together
• One process analyst, multiple domain experts
• Participants interact to create shared understanding
• Often: software-supported, a model is directly
created during the workshop (separate role)
• Model is reference point for
discussions
• Alternative: brown-paper
workshops

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 Relative Strengths and
Limitations
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

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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 Effort of Process Discovery
- Consider that the order process of your
favorite online book retailer has ten
major activities that are conducted by
different persons. How much time do you
need approximately for creating a
process model that is validated and
approved by the process owner? Make
appropriate assumptions.
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 Process Discovery Effort
- This process contains ten major activities that are executed by different
persons. We can assume that there will be a kickoff meeting with the
process owner and some important domain experts on day one. One day
might be required to study available documentation. An interview with one
domain expert can take from two to three hours, such that we would be
able to meet two persons per day, and document the interview results at
night time. Let us assume that we meet some persons only once while we
seek feedback from important domain experts in two additional interviews.
Then, there would be a final approval from the process owner. This adds up
to one day for the kickoff, one for document study, five days for the first
iteration interviews, and further five days if we assume that we meet five
experts three times. Then, we need one day for preparing the meeting for
final approval with the process owner, which would be on the following
day. If there are no delays and scheduling problems, this yields 2 + 5 + 5 + 2
= 14 work days as a minimum.

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 Any Difference in Discovery?
• Consider the following two companies.
• Company A is young, founded three years
ago, and has grown rapidly to a current toll
of one hundred employees.
• Company B is owned by the state and
operates in a domain with extensive health
and security regulations.
• How might these different characteristics
influence a workshop-based discovery
approach?
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 Discovery and Culture
Before starting with process discovery, it is important to
understand the culture and the sentiment of an organization.
There are companies that preach and practice an open
culture in which all employee are encouraged to utter their
ideas and their criticism. Such organizations can benefit a lot
from workshops as participants are likely to present their
ideas freely. In strictly hierarchical organizations, it is
necessary to take special care that every participant gets an
equal share of parole in a workshop and that ideas and
critique are not hold back. It might be the case that the young
dynamic company has a more open culture than the company
with extensive health and security regulations. This has to be
taken into account when organizing a workshop.

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 3.Process Modelling Method
1. Identify the process boundaries
2. Identify activities and events
3. Identify resources and their handovers
4. Identify the control flow
5. Identify additional elements.

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 Identify the Process
Boundaries
• Under which condition does the process
start?
• With which result does it end?
• Which perspective do you assume?

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Identify Activities and Events

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Identify Resources and their
Handovers

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Identify Control Flow

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 Your modeling project
•For your modeling project, capture
• Control flow
• Activities
• Gateways
• Conditions
• Events
• Resources

•Describe the process in such a way that it can be used to

trace in which state the admission/doctor-studies is and
who is conducting which steps of processing.

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4.Quality Assurance

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Is this process model of
good quality?
Deadlock

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 Syntactic Quality and
Verification
- Goal of producing the model that conforms
the rules.
- Cos. Give Guidelines to guarantee
consistency and comparability :
Verification
Structural correctness – incoming
&outgoing arc
Behavioural correctness – never reach
livelock or deadlock

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Syntactic Quality: Verification

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Is this process model of good
quality?

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 Formulate Labels Adequately
• Activities as Verb-Object
• Events as Object-Passive-Participle
• Conditions with reference to Object

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 Semantic Quality: Validation
• Correctness and
• Completeness

Domain Expert Process Analyst

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 Pragmatic Quality
- Good usability
- Certification
- Understand ability
- Maintainability
- Learning

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Pragmatic Quality: Layout
Models must look nice

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 Seven Process Modeling
Guidelines (7PMG)
G1 Use as few elements in the model as possible
G2 Minimize the routing paths per element
G3 Use one start and one end event
G4 Model as structured as possible
G5 Avoid OR routing elements
G6 Use verb-object activity labels
G7 Decompose a model with more than 50
elements

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 Explain which 7PMG guidelines point to potential
for improvement. Remodel the process based on your
observations.

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The reworked process

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 Summary
• Domain expert and process analyst have
different strengths and limitations in
process discovery
• There are various discovery methods
• Quality Assurance is important

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