Process Equivalence: Comparing Two Process Models Based on Observed Behavior

In various application domains there is a desire to compare process models, e.g., to relate an organization-specific process model to a reference model, to find a web service matching some desired service description, or to compare some normative process model with a process model discovered using process mining techniques. Although many researchers have worked on different notions of equivalence (e.g., trace equivalence, bisimulation, branching bisimulation, etc.), most of the existing notions are not very useful in this context. First of all, most equivalence notions result in a binary answer (i.e., two processes are equivalent or not). This is not very helpful, because, in real-life applications, one needs to differentiate between slightly different models and completely different models. Second, not all parts of a process model are equally important. There may be parts of the process model that are rarely activated while other parts are executed for most process instances. Clearly,...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: BPM
• Authors: Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Ana Karla A. de Medeiros, A. J. M. M. Weijters
• Keywords: BPM 2006, Business, Normative Process Model, Organization-specific Process Model, Process Models