A new online course from Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) explains how business processes can be analyzed on the basis of collected event data from IT systems. The free two-week educational offering is entitled: "A Step-by-Step Introduction to Process Mining." The course, offered in English, starts on May 5 on the IT learning platform openHPI. Registration is available online at: https://open.hpi.de/courses/processmining2021
"The goal is to give professionals from management, consulting and information technology a common understanding of the basics of this complex technology," says Prof. Mathias Weske, head of HPI's Business Process Management department. Weske is leading the free course together with Prof. Henrik Leopold, associate professor for Data Science and Business Intelligence at Kühne Logistics University (KLU).
Both scientists want to introduce participants to the basic concepts and techniques of process mining. The aim is to facilitate communication between the stakeholders involved in business process improvement projects.
Recognizing and evaluating variants of business processes
"Process mining is used today not only for analyzing business processes, but also increasingly in logistics and healthcare," explains computer scientist Weske. In many cases, he says, the objective is to identify and quantify weak points and different variants in business processes.
In course week 1, Weske and his professor colleague Leopold will present an exemplary business process, and examine event data that is generated during its execution and transferred in a suitable format to so-called event logs. From this logged data, as presented by the course instructors, the actual process flow can then be reconstructed and made visible.
Course week 2 is primarily devoted to the question of how process mining software can use this as a basis for detecting deviations from target processes and possible problems involving compliance with rules and regulations. The HPI scientists also explain how process mining helps us to find out why specific decisions were made in a business process and what factors determine the overall duration of real processes.
Participants who watch all the instructional videos, complete the self-tests and do the homework will need about three hours for each course week, as estimated by the course instructors. The instructors hope for intensive discussions between teachers and learners in the online course forum. Participants who score more than half of the possible points will receive a certificate from the internationally renowned institute.