Developing a General Approach to Apply Process Mining in Practice

Process mining is a form of business process analysis based on recorded process data. Process mining techniques support organizations in retrieving structured process information using the logged events to discover, monitor and improve their processes. Currently, the process mining community is lacking a methodology that describes how to accomplish process mining in practice. This research project describes an initial step towards the development of a comprehensive process mining project methodology in which different phases and main activities of business process mining projects are described and that can be used as an efficient and effective approach in order to apply process mining in practice. The methodology is developed using System Engineering Process and is validated by a case study at Rabobank Nederland. The methodology seems to be a valuable methodology for conducting process mining projects in practice. II Preface This document describes a Master's Thesis which was partly performed at Rabobank Nederland. The project gave me the opportunity to get to know a lot more about doing research, process mining, the process mining community, myself and working life in a big company. Although this half a year was not always easy, it was definitely highly interesting, very instructive and absolutely rewarding. First of all I would like to thank Hajo for all his support, suggestions, critical remarks and the good conversations. I want to thank Ton for his specific feedback on process mining that improved the quality of the research project. I am also very thankful to the Rabobank for giving me the opportunity to get to know the business. Martijn for his mentoring role and support, especially in order to get appropriate data for the process mining project. Ben for the discussions to make sense out of the process data and being a great 'roommate'. Frank for all his support in combining theory about process mining and practice. Sander for making me aware of how big companies work and how to get things done. Furthermore, many thanks to Anne and Christian of Fluxicon for giving me the opportunity to participate in the beta program of the great new process mining tool Disco and providing me with support in the development of the methodology. Finally, my gratitude also goes out to my family, friends and all students that supported me during my study. In particular, my parents for all their support in giving me this chance and making me aware of …