The Challenge of Process Discovery

Capturing and understanding your organization’s business processes is a critical step in any business process initiative, but one that is often performed poorly, if at all. The history of business is replete with discovery failures and successful but extraordinarily painful efforts at process discovery. These failures are generally the result of a mix of causes: perceived lack of value, insufficient resources, faulty methodology, or inadequate tooling. This paper discusses the concept of process discovery. It explains why discovery is needed, compares several methodologies in current use, and describes how discovery can yield valuable insights for automation and business improvement initiatives.