“There’s a lot more to mining than meets the eye” – News

The dark side of process mining

When Stein Dani began his doctoral research, he initially focused on the data preparation phase of process mining. However, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted his plans, making it impossible to visit the companies necessary for his project. Forced to change direction, he first turned to a literature review. During this study, he noticed an overwhelmingly positive representation of process mining in most of the case studies. This aroused his suspicions. “It was just too good to be true,” reflects Stein Dani. As a result, he began interviewing process mining experts from around the world about their experiences. “That’s when I started to discover the dark side of process mining,” he says.

No magic wand

During the interviews, many experts shared stories about process mining failures in organizations. They were the first to experience these cases. Stein Dani collected the testimonies and began to identify the main challenges and specific causes of these failures, which he calls “terminators”.

“The main conclusion is that there is much more to mining than meets the eye,” summarizes Stein Dani. “Companies sell Process Mining tools as if they were a magic wand,” he says, “but there is a lot more work to be done before and after Process Mining techniques can be used. , which people often underestimate.”