Defining and visualizing process execution variants from partially ordered event data

Information Sciences, vol. 657, pp. 119958

Abstract

The execution of operational processes generates event data stored in enterprise information systems. Process mining techniques analyze such event data to obtain insights vital for decision-makers to improve the reviewed process. In this context, event data visualizations are essential. We focus on visualizing variants describing process executions that are control flow equivalent. Such variants are an integral concept for process mining and are used, e.g., for data exploration and filtering. We propose high-level and low-level variants covering different levels of abstraction and present corresponding visualizations. Compared to existing variant visualizations, we support partially ordered event data and allow for heterogeneous temporal information per event, i.e., we support both time intervals and time points. We evaluate our contributions using automated experiments showing practical applicability to real-life event data. Finally, we present a user study indicating significantly improved usefulness and ease of use of the proposed high-level variant visualization compared to existing variant visualizations for typical analysis tasks.

Authors 4

1. Daniel Schuster corresponding Aachen Chair of Process and Data Science

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, 53757, Germany

   RWTH Aachen University, Chair of Process and Data Science, Aachen, Germany

2. Francesca Zerbato corresponding

   University of St.Gallen

   Affiliation as printed

   University of St. Gallen, Institute of Computer Science, St.Gallen, Switzerland

3. Sebastiaan J. van Zelst corresponding Aachen Chair of Process and Data Science

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, 53757, Germany

   RWTH Aachen University, Chair of Process and Data Science, Aachen, Germany

4. Wil M. P. van der Aalst corresponding Aachen Chair of Process and Data Science

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, 53757, Germany

   RWTH Aachen University, Chair of Process and Data Science, Aachen, Germany