Enterprise information management systems development two cases of mining for process conformance

Abstract

This article investigates how Process Mining may be used to check process conformance in enterprise information system development. The concept of using Process Mining beyond pure business processes is exemplified on the bug closure processes of two open-source enterprise systems. The process models and conclusions extracted are used for drawing some generic guidelines enterprise information project managers can adopt to assess the quality of their system development processes. Process conformance checking is performed in the Bugzilla databases of two open-source enterprise information systems using Disco. The extracted models are assessed based on the documentation of the projects and are compared to the bug closure process Bugzilla team suggests being used. The findings revealed that the processes followed in the projects are very similar to the ones presented in their documentation, conforming with Bugzilla guidelines. However, several variations are revealed under specific circumstances. Potential benefits from applying Process Mining techniques for information system development management are briefly summarized. This empirical research extends previous work that has been performed in the field of Process Mining and highlights the importance and necessity of Process Mining in enterprise information system development to help standardize and improve the internal processes of an organization and to serve as a proof of compliance by external collaborators developing software for an organization. In addition, it capitalizes on the adoption of inner source development model by many companies developing enterprise software nowadays.

Keywords

• Process Mining
• Software event logs
• Enterprise information systems
• Inner source
• Process conformance
• Enterprise system development