A Procedural Framework for Assessing the Desirability of Process Deviations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a systematic procedural framework to help process analysts evaluate whether deviations from process models are problematic, acceptable, or beneficial, improving consistency and efficiency in desirability assessments.

Contribution

It presents a novel step-by-step framework for systematically assessing the desirability of process deviations, based on literature review and empirical practitioner insights.

Findings

Framework enables more consistent desirability assessments

Practitioners found the framework streamlined their evaluation process

Evaluation showed the framework's effectiveness in real-world tasks

Abstract

Conformance checking techniques help process analysts to identify where and how process executions deviate from a process model. However, they cannot determine the desirability of these deviations, i.e., whether they are problematic, acceptable or even beneficial for the process. Such desirability assessments are crucial to derive actions, but process analysts typically conduct them in a manual, ad-hoc way, which can be time-consuming, subjective, and irreplicable. To address this problem, this paper presents a procedural framework to guide process analysts in systematically assessing deviation desirability. It provides a step-by-step approach for identifying which input factors to consider in what order to categorize deviations into mutually exclusive desirability categories, each linked to action recommendations. The framework is based on a review and conceptualization of existing literature on deviation desirability, which is complemented by empirical insights from interviews with process analysis practitioners and researchers. We evaluate the framework through a desirability assessment task conducted with practitioners, indicating that the framework effectively enables them to streamline the assessment for a thorough yet concise evaluation.