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Process Discovery Flow

Run Process Discovery Flow Fullscreen

You can include this MicroSim on your website using the following iframe:

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<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/organizational-analytics/sims/process-discovery/main.html" height="542px" width="100%" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Description

This MicroSim demonstrates process discovery — the automated reconstruction of a business process model from event log data. The left panel shows a table of 25 events across 4 hiring process cases. The right panel builds a discovered process map as events are analyzed.

How to use:

  • Press Discover Process to watch the algorithm analyze events and build the process map
  • Observe how deviations (red edges) appear: Case H-003 skips screening, Case H-004 loops back from Decision to Interview
  • Toggle Show Ideal Process to overlay the documented 6-step linear process in gray
  • Press Reset to start the discovery again

Lesson Plan

Learning Objective: Students will analyze event log data to discover the actual flow of a business process and compare it to the documented process.

Bloom's Level: Analyze (L4)

Activities:

  1. Before pressing Discover, examine the event log — can you spot which cases deviate from the normal hiring flow?
  2. Run the discovery and identify all deviation edges (red). Explain why each deviation occurred
  3. Toggle the ideal process overlay and discuss: is the documented process wrong, or are the deviations problems?

Assessment: Students receive a new event log for a different process (e.g., expense approval) and manually construct a process map, identifying normal flows and deviations.

References

  1. Process Mining - Wikipedia - Discovery, conformance, and enhancement of business processes from event logs
  2. Petri Net - Wikipedia - The mathematical formalism underlying many process discovery algorithms