Process-Aware Information Systems: Lessons to Be Learned from Process Mining

Abstract

A Process-Aware Information System (PAIS) is a software system that manages and executes operational processes involving people, applications, and/or information sources on the basis of process models. Example PAISs are workflow management systems, case-handling systems, enterprise information systems, etc. This paper provides a brief introduction to these systems and discusses the role of process models in the PAIS life-cycle. Moreover, it provides a critical reflection on the state-of-the-art based on experiences with process mining . Process mining techniques attempt to extract non-trivial and useful information from event logs. One aspect of process mining is control-flow discovery, i.e., automatically constructing a process model (e.g., a Petri net) describing the causal dependencies between activities. The insights provided by process mining are very valuable for the development of the next generation PAISs because they clearly show a mismatch between the models proposed for driving these systems and reality. On the one hand, models tend to oversimplify things resulting in systems that are too restrictive. On the other hand, models fail to capture important aspects of business processes.