Towards Integrating Visual Analytics in Multi-Perspective Conformance Checking: A Call to Action

Abstract

The research fields of Process Mining (PM) and Visual Analytics (VA) can mutually benefit from each other by combining their strengths. PM tasks include process discovery, enhancement, and conformance checking. This paper focuses on conformance checking, where the event log is compared against a reference model to identify potential deviations in process behavior. Conformance checking is often limited to analyzing the control flow (i.e., sequences of activities), while other relevant perspectives present in the data, such as resources and time, are frequently overlooked. These additional perspectives are crucial to form a holistic understanding of deviations and their underlying causes. To address these limitations, we propose a conceptual framework and explore future opportunities for integrating VA with PM to support conformance checking from multiple perspectives. Our contribution emphasizes interactive visualization and analysis for a more flexible and iterative conformance checking process by, for example, allowing to dynamically refine and define additional constraints based on insights from multiple perspectives and making all deviations explainable and understandable.