Comparing business process variants using models and event logs

Organizations realize that benefits can be achieved by closely working together on the design of their business processes. But even when there is a joint design for a particular business process, the way individual organizations carry out that process may differ – either wittingly or unwittingly. This paper proposes an analytical approach that helps to compare how different organizations execute essentially the same process. This comparison is based on the alignment of recorded process behavior with explicitly defined process models. The distinctive feature of the proposed approach is that it supports the comparison of the actual execution of a process within a particular organization with its intended design, as well as with the variants of that design by other organizations. In this way, organizations can develop a better understanding of how they can work together and further standardize a process of common interest. We include an industrial case study from the context of the CoSeLoG project to demonstrate the value of this comparison approach.