Business Process Variant Analysis: Survey and Classification

TL;DR

This paper surveys and classifies methods for analyzing differences in business process executions, providing a taxonomy and a methodology to identify process variants for improved process management.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive systematic review, taxonomy, and a step-by-step methodology for business process variant analysis, addressing the interdisciplinary heterogeneity in existing approaches.

Findings

Provides a taxonomy of process variant analysis methods

Proposes a methodology for identifying process variants

Highlights the interdisciplinary challenges in process analysis

Abstract

Process variant analysis aims at identifying and addressing the differences existing in a set of process executions enacted by the same process model. A process model can be executed differently in different situations for various reasons, e.g., the process could run in different locations or seasons, which gives rise to different behaviors. Having intuitions about the discrepancies in process behaviors, though challenging, is beneficial for managers and process analysts since they can improve their process models efficiently, e.g., via interactive learning or adapting mechanisms. Several methods have been proposed to tackle the problem of uncovering discrepancies in process executions. However, because of the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge, the methods and sorts of analysis in the literature are very heterogeneous. This article not only presents a systematic literature review and taxonomy of methods for variant analysis of business processes but also provides a methodology including the required steps to apply this type of analysis for the identification of variants in business process executions.