How To Determine The Start and End Points For Your Process
This is the second article in our series on how to deal with incomplete cases in process mining. You can find an overview of all articles in the series here.
Once you start analyzing your data set for incomplete cases, you need to determine what the expected start and end points in your process are. Typically, you do this by looking at which activities appear to be the last step in the process (look at the dashed lines in your process map) and by using your domain knowledge about the process.
In the refund process, we have already identified one possible regular endpoint in the activity ‘Order completed’. But are there other regular end points as well? For example, by digging deeper in the data we find that there is another activity ‘Cancelled’ that also appears as the last step in the process. From the name ‘Cancelled’ we can guess what this step means (the processing of the refund order has been stopped). The question is whether we consider ‘Cancelled’ a regular end point in the process, or whether we would rather remove cancelled cases from our process analysis?
The answer to this question depends on the questions that you want to answer in you process mining analysis. Furthermore, you typically need domain knowledge to definitively clarify how the process end points should be interpreted. It is fine for you as the process analyst to take some initial guesses, but it is critical that you document your assumptions along
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
