Process discovery from event data: Relating models and logs through abstractions

Event data are collected in logistics, manufacturing, finance, health care, customer relationship management, e-learning, e-government, and many other domains. The events found in these domains typically refer to activities executed by resources at particular times and for a particular case (i.e., process instances). Process mining techniques are able to exploit such data. In this article, we focus on process discovery. However, process mining also includes conformance checking, performance analysis, decision mining, organizational mining, predictions, recommendations, and so on. These techniques help to diagnose problems and improve processes. All process mining techniques involve both event data and process models. Therefore, a typical first step is to automatically learn a control-flow model from the event data. This is very challenging, but in recent years, many powerful discovery techniques have been developed. It is not easy to compare these techniques since they use different representations and make different assumptions. Users often need to resort to trying different algorithms in an ad-hoc manner. Developers of new techniques are often trying to solve specific instances of a more general problem. Therefore, we aim to unify existing approaches by focusing on log and model abstractions. These abstractions link observed and modeled behavior: Concrete behaviors recorded in event logs are related to possible behaviors represented by process models. Hence, such behavioral abstractions provide an interface between both of them. We discuss four discovery approaches involving three abstractions and different types of process models (Petri nets, block-structured models, and declarative models). The goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of process discovery and show how to develop new techniques. Examples illustrate the different approaches and pointers to software are given. The discussion on abstractions and process representations is also presented to reflect on the gap between process mining literature and commercial process mining tools. This facilitates users to select an appropriate process discovery technique. Moreover, structuring the role of internal abstractions and representations helps broaden the view and facilitates the creation of new discovery approaches. This article is categorized under: Algorithmic Development > Spatial and Temporal Data Mining Application Areas > Business and Industry Technologies > Machine Learning Application Areas > Data Mining Software Tools