Chapter 5: Process Discovery

Question 1

What is process discovery?

Answer 1

act of gathering information about an existing process and organization it in terms of an as-is process model.

Question 2

What are the four phases of process discovery?

Answer 2

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 modelling task: This phase deals with organizing the creation of the process model. The modelling 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.
   Who is involved: Domain Expert and process Analyst

Question 3

What are the challenges of process discovery?

Answer 3

1. Fragmented Process knowledge
2. Domain experts think on instance level.
3. Knowledge about process modelling is rare

Question 4

What are the difference between a process analyst and domain expert?

Answer 4

Process analyst:

• one or a few process analysts
• profound knowlege of business process modeling techniques

Domain expert:

• serveral domain experts
• detailed knowledge of the operation of the considered business process.

Question 5

What are the discovery methods

Answer 5

• Evidence-based:
- Document analysis
- Observation
- Process mining
• Interview-based
• Workshop-based
- 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

Question 6

What are the different types of evidence-based discovery? Explain document analysis.

Answer 6

1. Document analysis:
   - Exploits that there is usually documentation material available that can be related to an existing process.

Issues:

• The available documentation is not readily organized in a process-oriented way
• Level of granularity of the material might not be appropriate. The documentation is too detailed for modelling processes.
• Many documents are only part trustworthy. Some are outdated/show how it would work idealistically.

Advantage:
Process Analyst can get familiar with certain parts of a process and its environment.

Question 7

Explain the evidence-based discovery: Obervation

Answer 7

• Directly follow the processing of individual cases in order to get an understanding of how a process works.
• active customer role: process analyst triggers the execution of a process, records the steps that are executed and the set of choices that are offered.
• passive customer role: more appropriate for understanding the entire process, also requires acces to the people and sights where the process is being worked on.

Question 8

Explain the automatic process discovery/

Answer 8

• emerges from the extensive operational support of business processes provided by various information systems.
• events have to be related to three things: individual case of the process, a specfic activity of the process and a precise point in time.

Question 9

What is interview based discovery

Answer 9

• refers to the method that build on interviewing domain experts about how a process is executed.

Disadvantage:
Person interviewed will always describe the normal process and never the exceptional tends

Question 10

What is workshop-based discovery

Answer 10

• offers the opportunity to get a rich set of information on the business process.

Question 11

Each method has strengths and limitations. They are discussed in terms of:
 Objectivity

Answer 11

o Evidence-based
 Best level of objectivity. Existing documents/logs and observation provide an
unbiased account of how a process works.

o Interview-based/ Workshop-based
 Have to rely on the description and interpretation of domain experts. Risk that
persons may have perceptions and ideas that are not correct.

Question 12

Each method has strengths and limitations. They are discussed in terms of:
Richness

Answer 12

o Evidence-based
 Show issues that need to be discussed and raise questions, often do not provide an
answer.

o Interview-based/ Workshop-based
 Strong in providing rich insights in the process. Domain experts are a good source to
clarify reasons and objectives for why a process is set up as it is.

Question 13

Each method has strengths and limitations. They are discussed in terms of:

Time consumption

Answer 13

o Interview-based
 Suffer from several feedback iterations.

o Workshop-based
 Difficult to schedule workshop with different domain experts on short notice.

Question 14

Each method has strengths and limitations. They are discussed in terms of:

Immediacy of feedback

Answer 14

o Evidence-based
 Raise various questions about how a process works. Can only be answered by talking
to domain expert.

o Interview-based
 Opportunity to ask questions.

o Workshop-based
 Inconsistent perceptions about the operation of a process can be directly resolved
by involved parties.

Question 15

What is are the different quality assurance?

Answer 15

Quality Assurance
• Syntactic quality: 
– Conform to the rules of the notation 
• Semantic quality:
– Making true statements about the world 
• Pragmatic quality 
– Usable by stakeholders

Question 16

What is semantic quality?

Answer 16

The goal of producing models that make ture statements about the considered domain.
- Validity: means that alle statements included in the model are correct and relevant to the problem (Correctness)
- Completeness: means that the model contains all relevant statements on a process that would be correct.
Domain expert process analyst

Question 17

What is pragmatic quality?

Answer 17

The goal of building a process model of good usability.

• Certification is the activity of checking the pragmatic quality of a process model by investigating its usage. Serveral aspects of usability:
• Understandability relates to the fact how easy it is to read
• maintainability: points to the ease of applying changes to a process model
• learning : relates o the degree of how good a process model reveals how a process works in reality

Question 18

What are the guidelines for process modeling: 7PMG

Answer 18

 G1: Use as few elements in the model as possible
 G2: Minimize the routing paths per elements
 G3: Use one start and one end event
 G4: Model as structured as possible
 G5: Avoid OR-gateways
 G6: Use verb-object activity labels
 G7: Decompose a model with more than 30 elements

Question 19

Discuss the three types of quality that are involved in Process Model Quality Assurance.

Answer 19

Syntactic quality relates to the issue whether a model conforms to the rulesof the modeling language used, as well as the guidelines that may have been imposed on the process models beyond such rules. One can think of the type of modeling elements used, the way model elements are connected, etc.

Semantic quality relates to the goal of producing models that make true statementsabout the considered domain, either for existing as-is processes or future to-be processes.In other words: is what is in the model an adequate reflection of the real world and is the model complete?

Pragmatic quality relates to the goal of building a process model of good usability. Examples of issues involved are the understandability and maintainability of a model, as well as how easy it is to learn from it. Size, complexity and layout of a model have a big impact on the pragmatic quality of a model.