1. Roles & Rules
Now that we have a better idea of the process, let's shed some light on a few specific aspects of the process. But, first, let's have a quick recap on what we just did.
2. Zooming out
Often, certain tasks in a process can be performed in any order. These are so-called parallel activities. Parallel activities can be somewhat annoying, since they will lead to an explosion of traces and will create many different flows in a process map.
3. Zooming out
However, when you are able to identify parallel activities, it is often easy to put them together in a sub process and collapse it, using the activity collapse function we learned in the previous chapter.
4. Zooming out
In this way you can abstract from the large amount of traces and get a higher view of the process. This can be thought of as zooming out.
5. Zooming in
6. Zooming out
Using this mechanism, you can literally fold up a process map to get a clearer idea of how the process looks like.
7. Zooming in
On the other hand, when you want a detailed view, you can always return to the original data, or even zoom in on a part of it, by selecting a specific segment of the process.
8. Zooming in
Process analysis is often a very iterative process, where you will alternate between high level views and low level views, depending on the specific question you want to answer.
9. Answering Research Questions
But, let's look if we can answer some research questions about the process.
In the previous chapters we learned that analyses typically combine one or more perspectives: organisational, time, control-flow or data.
No matter how these perspectives are combined, research questions will typically be two types.
On the one hand, there are performance related questions.
Is the process completing instances within a desired time frame?
Are there any bottleneck activities?
What is the occupancy rate of our resources? Etc.
10. Answering Research Questions
On the other hand, we have compliance related questions.
Is the process always executed in a right way, or are there any worrisome deviations of the appropriate flows?
Do resources adhere to the roles that are specfied for them?
Compliance questions often aim at verifying a set of rules, which may be defined within the company, or externally in the way of laws and regulations.
11. Roles & Rules
In the next exercises, we'll start with looking at some compliance related issues.
Firstly, do resources adhere to the roles that are decided upon by the process owner.
Secondly, is the 4-eye principle obeyed, which states that certain pairs of activities should not be executed by the same person, as a measure to avoid fraud.
Finally, we will also check whether certain control-flow related rules are followed or not.
12. Let's practice!
Now let's try some examples.