Insight Through Process Mining

When processes are executed, application systems store data about the start and end of functions in so-called log files. The management and evaluation of these data traces from business processes are referred to as process mining. The structure of log files is described using an example and the essential tasks of process mining such as process model generation and process model comparison are discussed. Process mining usually refers to the data source log files. But the automatic recording of user activities at the front end also provides data traces for process mining. This task mining is covered at the end of the chapter. Statements that are very specific or refer to specific systems are marked in italics. Readers who are more interested in an overview can skip these parts without losing the content guide. The following figure establishes the connection to the lifecycle in Fig. 1.9.