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Fundamentals of Business Process Management pp 159–212Cite as

Process Discovery

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Abstract

Various methods can be used to create a process model from information inferred within the organization, e.g., by interviewing process participants or by observing how these operate in practice. Meanwhile, it is important to ensure that a model is not only syntactically correct, but that it also accurately reflects the actual business process being modeled. In this chapter, we first present the challenges faced by the stakeholders involved in the lead-up to a process model. Then, we discuss methods to facilitate effective communication and information gathering about business processes. We then show step-by-step how to construct a process model based on the gathered information, and what quality criteria should be checked before the model can be accepted as an authoritative representation of a business process.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

  2. School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Marcello La Rosa

  3. Institute for Information Business, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Jan Mendling

  4. Department of Computer Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Hajo A. Reijers

Authors
  1. Marlon Dumas
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  2. Marcello La Rosa
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  3. Jan Mendling
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  4. Hajo A. Reijers
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Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A. (2018). Process Discovery. In: Fundamentals of Business Process Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56509-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56509-4_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-56508-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-56509-4

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