A Case Study Lens on Process Mining in Practice

Abstract

Process mining has a history of over two decades of published research papers and case studies started to appear a bit over a decade ago. In this paper we review these published process mining case studies to assess the maturity of the field from a practice point of view by considering (i) diffusion of tools and techniques into practice, and (ii) the thoroughness of the application of process mining methodologies. Diffusion is assessed by analysing the breadth of domains to which process mining has been applied and the variety of tools and techniques employed. We define measures of thoroughness for each of the various phases of a generalised process mining methodology and examine case studies identified from a literature search against these measures. We conclude that, despite maturing in terms of diffusion, application of process mining in practice has not seen an increased maturity over time in terms of thoroughness. One way to redress this situation is to pay more attention to the development of and adherence to methodological guidance.