Rethinking the Input for Process Mining: Insights from the XES Survey and Workshop

Abstract

Although the popularity and adoption of process mining techniques grew rapidly in recent years, a large portion of effort invested in process mining initiatives is still consumed by event data extraction and transformation rather than process analysis. The IEEE Task Force on Process Mining conducted a study focused on the challenges faced during event data preparation (from source data to event log). This paper presents findings from the online survey with 289 participants spanning the roles of practitioners, researchers, software vendors, and end-users. These findings were presented at the XES 2.0 workshop co-located with the 3rd International Conference on Process Mining. The workshop also hosted presentations from various stakeholder groups and a discussion panel on the future of XES and the input needed for process mining. This paper summarises the main findings of both the survey and the workshop. These outcomes help us to accelerate and improve the standardisation process, hopefully leading to a new standard widely adopted by both academia and industry.