Process Mining for Process Improvement - An Evaluation of Analysis Practices

Abstract

Organizations have a vital interest in continuously improving their business processes. Process analysts can use process mining tools that provide data-driven discovery and analysis of business processes to achieve this. Current research has mainly focused on creating and evaluating new tools or reporting process mining case studies from different domains. Although usage of process mining has increased in industry, insights into how analysts work with such methods to identify improvement opportunities have consequently been limited. To reduce this gap, we conducted an exploratory interview study of seven process analysts from different domains. Our findings indicate that process analysts assess improvement opportunities by their impact, the feasibility of required implementation, and stakeholders’ input. Furthermore, our results indicate that process mining tools, when used to identify improvement opportunities, do not provide sufficient support for analysis, requiring process analysts to use additional tools. Lastly, analysts use storytelling to frame and communicate their findings to various stakeholders.