Automated Discovery of Structured Process Models From Event Logs: The Discover-and-Structure Approach

Abstract

This article tackles the problem of discovering a process model from an event log recording the execution of tasks in a business process. Previous approaches to this reverse-engineering problem strike different tradeoffs between the accuracy of the discovered models and their structural complexity. With respect to the latter property, empirical studies have demonstrated that block-structured process models are gener- ally more understandable and less error-prone than unstructured ones. Accordingly, several methods for automated process model discovery generate block-structured models only. These methods however intertwine the objective of producing accurate models with that of ensuring their..