Redescription mining-based business process deviance analysis

Business processes often deviate from their expected or desired behavior. Such deviations can be either positive or negative, depending on whether or not they lead to better process performance. Deviance mining addresses the problem of identifying such deviations and explaining why a process deviates. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to identify and explain the causes of deviant process executions based on the technique of redescription mining, which extracts knowledge in the form of logical rules. By analyzing, comparing, and filtering these rules, the reasons for the deviant behaviors of a business process are identified both in general and for particular process instances. Afterward, the results of this analysis are transformed into a concise and well-readable natural language text that can be used by business analysts and process owners to optimize processes in a reasoned manner. We evaluate our approach from different angles using four process models and provide some advice for further optimization.