Blog of Joos Buijs

Couldn’t have explained the wonderfulness of process mining any better myself than this 1-minute video by Pallas Athena.

I also like the other videos on the (Australian) Pallas Athena website.

By the way, did you know that the Process Mining part in BPM|One (Reflect|One) is build and maintained by Futura Technology? And that Peter van den Brand, one of the owners and founders, studied and worked in our group??? Small world, isn’t it

Joos

PS sorry for the long radio silence but I have been working! Maybe I’ll post something about that later this week…

About Precisely a week ago I read the ‘How to Get Started With Prom‘ blog post on the Fluxicon Blog (err, ‘Capacitor‘). In this blog post Anne explains how an event log can be constructed, using Nitro in this case, then inspected and finally how a process model can be mined and animated using ProM. Overall, the blog post is very nice, as are all posts at the Fluxicon Blog.

There is however one thing I noticed when I was half-way the post: they use ProM 5! At first I thought, why? I mean, ProM 6 is ProM 6 after all, it’s not 4.5, it’s not 5.3, it’s 6! Therefore, it should be better than 5. Furthermore, Fluxicon, especially Christian, had a great influence in the development of ProM 6: Christian designed the new slick user interface of ProM 6 and also developed XES, the new event log standard on which ProM 6 is based (with backward compatibility with MXML which is used in ProM 5). Furthermore, ProM 6 uses ‘packages’ to wrap plug-ins. Packages can be installed and updated independently of the framework therefore allowing plug-ins to be updated by the authors independently of the release cycle of ProM 6.

So, I wondered, why explain new users how ProM 5 works? Shouldn’t you point them to ProM 6? Let them use the newest process mining tool, the state-of-the-art, with all its improvements. I’m not saying that ProM 5 is bad, of course not, but ProM 6 is better. Or is it?

Of course, I could have emailed Anne this question and I would have received a reply but I want to make this a public discussion. Why/when would you use ProM 5 instead of ProM 6?

Well, I can give a couple of reasons but I would sure like to know yours. And, of course, especially Anne’s reasons for introducing ProM 5 to our new process miners instead of ProM 6.

So, in summary, I believe that the benefits of ProM 6 compared to ProM 5 are:

• Better graphical interface which is nicer than the one of ProM 5. The main new feature of the GUI of ProM 6, in my opinion, is that it’s object based. A plug-in requires certain object (types) and produces certain others. This allows for dynamic ‘chaining’ of plug-ins, each plug-in taking the analysis one step further;
• Separation between plug-in and ProM 6 framework. You can choose which plug-ins / packages to install and updates can be made more frequent and independent of the ProM 6 framework updates;
• Support for the new XES event log format but also still supporting the well-known MXML format;
• Separation of GUI and execution, if a plug-in crashes the framework keeps running in most cases. Furthermore, it also allows for easier ‘grid deployment’ than ProM 5;

However, at the moment, ProM 5 has more (how much more?) plug-ins to offer. Each ProM 5 plug-in needs to be updated by the author (or a student) in order to run in ProM 6. So if you plan to do sophisticated analysis you might want to keep ProM 5 installed.

To conclude, I think that new process miners should be introduced to ProM 6. The usability is better than that of ProM 5 although for both you need a learning period.
For those more advanced in process mining it is necessary to switch between ProM 5 and ProM 6, depending on the type of analysis you want to perform. Hopefully most of the ProM 5 plug-ins will find their way, some with improvements, to ProM 6.

But, that’s only my opinion, what do you think? Do you think ProM 6 can replace ProM 5 yet? Do you point a new process miner to ProM 5 or ProM 6? And did I miss any (dis)advantages???
Let me know either in a comment on this post, the post at the Fluxicon Capacitor or maybe in a dedicated discussion on LinkedIn.

Looking forward to your opinions!!!

Joos

So, I’m settling nicely into my PhD life. Writing papers, starting up the CoSeLoG project, getting into contact with most of the participants in the project, never a dull moment!

Speaking of the CoSeLoG project, it now has its own, ‘official’, website: http://www.win.tue.nl/coselog. So far it does not contain much information but this will grow in the future (you can follow the RSS feed if you’re interested).

Another big change is the renaming of my XESMa application. Apparently, it can be pronounced like something completely different (which I did not think of). So, from today on, XESMa is renamed to XESame. Not like Sesame Street but Open Sesame of course! (since it will open the process mining cave where all kinds of treasury can be found…)

XESame has also been given a ‘real’ home, at processmining.org! So far the XESame page contains even less information than my blog post but when I find time I’ll add more explanations and examples. Furthermore, I plan to update the GUI of XESame, but CoSeLoG comes first…

So far so good, this was it for now, back to making contacts!

- Joos

Process mining is a hot research subject considering the large number of publications (see for instance Google Scholar and the full publication list of Wil van der Aalst).

Besides official publications there are of course less ‘official’ and less scientific writings about the subject. I was curious what I would find so I started a search on the world wide web…

The number 1 result is of course www.processmining.org, home of the well-known tools ProM and ProM Import developed at the TU/e. This website also explains the basics of process mining. A better introduction to the subject for ‘newbies’ might be the Wikipedia article on Process Mining.

Personally, I would put the LinkedIn group on Process Mining third. This group contains discussions on the subject and links to interesting (blog) posts are added. Another community around process mining is formed by the ProM-user and ProM-developer mailing lists. The ProM forum is not much used but has my personal preference above the (‘old fashioned’) mailing lists.

For those already more in to process mining the ‘IEEE task force on process mining’-wiki could be of interest. Extra tip: add the wiki changes RSS feed to your RSS reader

Business people excited about the possibilities of process mining should visit the following websites of companies that support process mining (in no particular order or claim of completeness):

• Futura Process Intelligence The first company specifically aimed at process mining, based in Eindhoven. Especially the ’14 day challenge’ should appeal.
• Fluxicon Possibly the second company specifically aimed at process mining Also based in Eindhoven (must have a reason…). This ‘new kid on the block’ is one to keep your eye on, curious to see where they are say 2 years from now.
• Surprisingly, the next company is also based in Eindhoven. MagnaView visualizes data and now also supports several process mining visualizations.
• Process mining as a business has crossed the waters to Norway. Businesscape provides the ‘Enterprise Visualization Suite’ incorporating several process mining techniques.
• Process mining is also incorporated in tools such as ARIS from IDS Scheer, BPM|One from Pallas Athena and Fujitsu’s ESI (although they call it Automated Process Discovery but its the same… (they disagree! but that’s not true…))
• And of course I forgot many other great companies… (let me know in the comments!)

Next, blog posts. There are many of them ‘out there’, some of them even talk about process mining. A (very) small selection is provided below, no selection is made on quality or actuality.

• Business Process Mining A dedicated process mining blog! (another one );
• Column 2, a more BPM related blog but nonetheless interesting;
• A Forrester blog post on process mining;
• An InfoSys blog post about process mining;
• There are also two Dutch blog posts from Atos Origin and managementsite.nl.
• And of course the Fluxicon blog (I think they’re busy, the haven’t posted in a while, that’s a good sign).

Recently, I discovered that research on the subject of process mining is also spreading to Italy and its already spread to Germany, America and Australia.

Well, I hoped I provided at least a few pointers for further reading.

Joos

Edit 28-01-’10: corrected some small typing mistakes
Edit 30-07-’10: Entered the correct link to the IEEE TFPM *oops*

Recently I helped someone unfamiliar with process mining in starting analysis on a log. One of the things that I noticed is that it is hard to get to know the overall ‘structure’ and meaning of the terms used. This is further complicated by inconsistent use of terminology in conversations and documentation but also in ProM 5.2. In this post I will try to explain some of the most common terms used in process mining and what they (should) mean.

Note: this is not a ‘definite’ list, it is just how I think the terms should be interpreted and used!!! Furthermore, any suggestions and additions are welcome!!!

The overall picture: A system (e.g. a workflow management system) facilitates the processing of cases using a predefined process in which activities and their ordering is defined. The activities executed in this system are recorded in an event log which can be ‘reverse engineered’ using ProM for instance. The log contains actual executions of events on cases on a certain moment in time by a certain actor etc.
The result of this reverse engineering can be a process model describing the behavior recorded in the log but performance -, social network – and constraint analysis is also possible. We won’t go into all the possible analyses in this post.

So, an (event) log contains information about process instances (e.g. cases) and the events that are performed on/for them.

It is also important to understand that there are two levels: one is the conceptual level in which we do not talk about actual instances but generally talk about objects that can appear in a log. The other level is the instance level in which you look at specific instances of process instances, event executions, originators, etc. etc. In the general terms list I tried to indicate whether a term refers to a conceptual aspect or really refers to an (set of) instance.

General Process Mining terms:

(Used in ProM 5.2 and MXML, new terms are used in ProM 6 and the XES event log format)

• Activity An action or task that can be performed for a process instance (conceptual level);
• Data attribute An extra attribute recorded in the MXML file. Examples are the amount of a purchase order or the patient’s age. These attributes can for instance be used for decision analysis in ProM (conceptual level);
• Event This can either refer to an activity or an event instance performed by a resource on a certain time for a specific process instance. The meaning therefore depends on the context in which it is used;
• Event Class Used in the ProM Dashboard, it refers to the number of different activities encountered in the log (instance level).
• Event Log A recording of a set of events, an MXML log is an example of an event log format (instance level);
• Event Instance A recording of an executed event with information such as execution timestamp, event type and originator (instance level);
• Event Type Each activity can be in one of several states. The most commonly used states are ‘start’ and ‘complete’. The meaning is very straightforward: an activity is started and a certain amount of time later it is completed. There are several other event types or states, for a complete overview see figure 4 in the ‘MXML paper’ (PDF) (might be outdated) (conceptual level);
• Log The original log generated by the source system which records things that have happened. In order to be used within ProM this needs to be converted to the MXML format using the ProM Import Framework (instance level).
• Process Instance (PI) The object you are following and on/for which events occur. Examples are cases, patients, machines etc. (can be both conceptual and instance level);
• Process mining Analyzing a business process based on an event log, see http://www.processmining.org;
• ProM An application to apply several process mining techniques to an event log, see http://www.processmining.org. The version at the moment of writing is 5.2 and version 6.0 is under development (nightly builds are available);
• ProM Import Framework A framework for converting event logs to the MXML event log format. A set of converters for common formats is available but new converters can be programmed in Java;
• Model Element Used in the ProM Dashboard Summary, it should be interpreted as ‘activity’.
• MXML A meta model for event logs. An event log needs to be in this XML format to be processed by ProM. More information can be found in the ‘meta model for process mining’ paper (PDF) (conceptual level);
• MXML log The actual MXML file with all the recordings following the MXML format (instance level);
• Resource Any actor that can execute an activity, for example humans, the system itself or a web service (conceptual level);
• Timestamp A time indication consisting of a date and possibly a time part (instance level);

Well, that’s the list for now. I hope I helped someone and did not add to the confusion. If you have any questions, suggestions or additions, please post a comment!!! Especially the ‘conceptual v.s. instance’ part was hard for me to explain so any improvements are welcome.

- Joos -

P.S. @my supervisor: I created this article in the weekend and scheduled it for publication on Tuesday, so don’t think I’m procrastinating