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Main Authors: Grohs, Michael, Cordes, Nadine, Rehse, Jana-Rebecca
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11525
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author Grohs, Michael
Cordes, Nadine
Rehse, Jana-Rebecca
author_facet Grohs, Michael
Cordes, Nadine
Rehse, Jana-Rebecca
contents Conformance checking techniques help process analysts to identify where and how process executions deviate from a process model. However, they cannot determine the desirability of these deviations, i.e., whether they are problematic, acceptable or even beneficial for the process. Such desirability assessments are crucial to derive actions, but process analysts typically conduct them in a manual, ad-hoc way, which can be time-consuming, subjective, and irreplicable. To address this problem, this paper presents a procedural framework to guide process analysts in systematically assessing deviation desirability. It provides a step-by-step approach for identifying which input factors to consider in what order to categorize deviations into mutually exclusive desirability categories, each linked to action recommendations. The framework is based on a review and conceptualization of existing literature on deviation desirability, which is complemented by empirical insights from interviews with process analysis practitioners and researchers. We evaluate the framework through a desirability assessment task conducted with practitioners, indicating that the framework effectively enables them to streamline the assessment for a thorough yet concise evaluation.
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publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Procedural Framework for Assessing the Desirability of Process Deviations
Grohs, Michael
Cordes, Nadine
Rehse, Jana-Rebecca
Software Engineering
Conformance checking techniques help process analysts to identify where and how process executions deviate from a process model. However, they cannot determine the desirability of these deviations, i.e., whether they are problematic, acceptable or even beneficial for the process. Such desirability assessments are crucial to derive actions, but process analysts typically conduct them in a manual, ad-hoc way, which can be time-consuming, subjective, and irreplicable. To address this problem, this paper presents a procedural framework to guide process analysts in systematically assessing deviation desirability. It provides a step-by-step approach for identifying which input factors to consider in what order to categorize deviations into mutually exclusive desirability categories, each linked to action recommendations. The framework is based on a review and conceptualization of existing literature on deviation desirability, which is complemented by empirical insights from interviews with process analysis practitioners and researchers. We evaluate the framework through a desirability assessment task conducted with practitioners, indicating that the framework effectively enables them to streamline the assessment for a thorough yet concise evaluation.
title A Procedural Framework for Assessing the Desirability of Process Deviations
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11525