ProM 4.0: Comprehensive support for real process analysis

Abstract

This tool paper describes the functionality of ProM. Version 4.0 of ProM has been released at the end of 2006 and this version reflects recent achievements in process mining. Process mining techniques attempt to extract non-trivial and useful information from so-called "event logs". One element of process mining is control-flow discovery, i.e., automatically constructing a process model (e.g., a Petri net) describing the causal dependencies between activities. Control-flow discovery is an interesting and practically relevant challenge for Petri-net researchers and ProM provides an excellent platform for this. For example, the theory of regions, genetic algorithms, free-choice-net properties, etc. can be exploited to derive Petri nets based on example behavior. However, as we will show in this paper, the functionality of ProM 4.0 is not limited to control-flow discovery. ProM 4.0 also allows for the discovery of other perspectives (e.g., data and resources) and supports related techniques such as conformance checking, model extension, model transformation, verification, etc. This makes ProM a versatile tool for process analysis which is not restricted to model analysis but also includes log-based analysis. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.