Title: Conformance analysis on software development: an experience with process mining

Authors: John Igor B. Da Cruz, Duncan D. Ruiz

Addresses: Faculty of Informatics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Predio 32, Sala 628, CEP 90619-900, Porto Alegre – RS – Brazil. ' Faculty of Informatics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Predio 32, Sala 628, CEP 90619-900, Porto Alegre – RS – Brazil

Abstract: Software organisations are investing more and more time and resources in their development processes. Conformance analysis is considered an important issue concerning process improvement initiatives. Process mining can be a valuable tool to gather data from event logs produced by management tools for software development environments. Process analysts can use the information obtained to quantify the correspondence between the process models and the real execution. This work discusses the issues concerning process mining in the context of software development processes. We also report an exploratory case study that takes activity records from a software maintenance project in a large software operation. The results were useful to an exploratory analysis as well as to examine the issues involved in the knowledge discovery process in this type of environment.

Keywords: process mining; conformance checking; software quality; conformance analysis; software development; development processes; process improvement; data gathering; event logs; management tools; process analysts; process models; real execution; activity records; software maintenance; exploratory analysis; knowledge discovery; business process integration; business process management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPIM.2011.040203

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 2011 Vol.5 No.2, pp.109 - 120

Published online: 18 Mar 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article