A Side of Data

In this episode of A Side Of Data, I interview Bernd Ruecker, a co-founder and chief technologist at Camunda - workflow and decision automation platform. We talk about workflow automation, workflow engines, business process modeling notation (BPMN), robotic process automation (RPA).   The episode timeline:   2:00 what are the workflows and what is workflow automation? 4:00 the difference between workflow, process, and routine? 6:00 what are the workflow engines? 8:00 Historical overview of workflow engines and BPMS. 12:00 why using BPMN? What is a good visual representation of the workflow/process 17:00 competition of the BPMN? Powerpoint? Event-driven process chain? 19:00 Process mining tools (DFGs, process maps vs BPMN) 22:00 workflow use case, on the granularity of BPMN model design 26:00 business process use cases vs software engineering use case for the workflow engines 28:40 RPA (robotic process automation) vs workflow automation 35:00 Future of workflow engines 39:00 How to see that your company needs workflow engines? 42:00 As a student, would you study workflow engines? 43:30 How to get started?   Additional info: Bernd's page: https://berndruecker.io/  Bernd's blog: https://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/ Camunda: https://camunda.com/   Find A SIDE OF DATA on twitter: https://twitter.com/ASideOFData And on the web: asideofdata.com SEND us an email with suggestions: asideofdata@protonmail.com   Listen to more A Side Of Data: Building a process mining startup with Raffaele Conforti: https://soundcloud.com/asideofdata/building-a-process-mining-startup-with-raffaele-conforti   New decade for process mining with Wil van der Aalst: https://soundcloud.com/asideofdata/new-decade-for-process-mining-with-wil-van-der-aalst

In this episode of A Side Of Data, I interview Sebastiaan van Zelst about his experience of building a pm4py python library for process mining. The show timeline: 1:30 How did pm4py start? The reasons behind 5:30 Why do you need a new library? Why python? 8:00 How big is the library now? What is the current progress 12:00 Categorizing and comparing process mining tools: programming libraries, strand-alone academic, commercial (Apromore, Prom, pm4py, Celonis, Fluxicon Disco, Minit, Process Gold, etc.) 17:30 Problems with commercial tools 20:30 How challenging was to build the pm4py. How easy is it to use the library with the coding workflow on python. 25:40 Projects built on top of the pm4py 29:00 What is available in the library now 32:00 How to start with pm4py and with process mining 34:20 About the PM4Knime project. 37:00 extra: What is the interactive process discovery, how pm4py supports it. Additional info: The library: http://pm4py.org  The paper on incremental discovery: https://sebastiaanvanzelst.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Incremental_Discovery_of_Hierarchical_Process_Models__RCIS_1.pdf Interviewee page: https://sebastiaanvanzelst.com/?page_id=62  Mentioned telegram bot: https://github.com/delas/pmbot Find A SIDE OF DATA on twitter: https://twitter.com/ASideOFData And on the web: asideofdata.com SEND us an email with suggestions: asideofdata@protonmail.com Listen to more A Side Of Data: Building a process mining startup with Raffaele Conforti: https://soundcloud.com/asideofdata/building-a-process-mining-startup-with-raffaele-conforti New decade for process mining with Wil van der Aalst: https://soundcloud.com/asideofdata/new-decade-for-process-mining-with-wil-van-der-aalst

In this episode of A Side Of Data I interview Raffaele Conforti about his experience of building an Australian process mining startup Process Diamond. Show notes: 2:00 What is process mining for the startup focusing on process mining software 3:30 How do you make a difference between process mining in comparison to data mining and machine learning with clients. 5:00 Is BPM an important for process mining projects? 6:00 Why would you develop a new tool in comparison of using existing tools for consultancy? 9:30 Difference between BPMN and process map 12:00 Problems of a process map and more about BPM models 18:00 About process diamond capabilities 21:00 How can your software compete with more established competitors like Celonis? 22:00 Conformance checking in Process diamond 27:00 Alignment vs business level alignment solutions 29:00 BPMN and conformance checking results. How do they work together? 31:00 What is the story behind the startup? 33:00 Why doing startup in Australia is different to Europe and US 35:00 How is the startup status 36:00 How to get trial of the software 38:00 How much time do you spend on consulting vs coding the startup Links to Raffaele page: http://www.raffaeleconforti.com Link to Process Diamond http://processdiamond.com Find A SIDE OF DATA on twitter: https://twitter.com/ASideOFData And on the web: asideofdata.com SEND us an email with suggestions: asideofdata@protonmail.com Listen to more episodes of the podcast, like this one: https://soundcloud.com/asideofdata/new-decade-for-process-mining-with-wil-van-der-aalst

In this episode of A Side of Data, I interview Jan Mendling about the use of process mining in business process management (BPM) initiatives. We talk about where the real benefit of process mining is when applied to real-world processes and where the limit is. Jan is a professor at Vienna University of economics and business. He is a successful researcher in the field of information systems, business process management, and process mining, with over 400 research articles published. One of his famous works is 7 process modeling guidelines. He coauthored books, such as Wirtschaftsinformatik and Fundamentals of business process management, the latter is used as a textbook in over 230 educational institutions around the world. We talk about: 2:00 What is bpm, what processes are and why they need to be managed 7:00 What are information systems 8:00 What is process mining - how the data from information systems is now useful 11:00 Process mining helps accomplish BPM objectives 14:00 How process mining helps process analysts 17:30 Is just seeing how the processes are important? How does it help process analyst. How can you justify price of process mining software? 25:00 Continuous monitoring and auditing with process mining (improvement projects) 27:00 Innovation vs incremental process improvement 34:00 Is there anything that process mining still cannot do in helping BPM? 37:00 Case study with an example of a customer loans 40:30 AB testing of business processes 43:00 What is the future of BPM vs process mining 46:00 is process mining only applicable in BPM scenario? 48:00 Resource recommendations to start with PM and BPM Jan's page: http://www.mendling.com/ Find A SIDE OF DATA on twitter: https://twitter.com/ASideOFData And on the web: asideofdata.com SEND us an email with suggestions: asideofdata@protonmail.com

In this episode of A Side of Data, I interviewed Wil van der Aalst. He is among the most cited computer science researchers in the world with over 100.000 citations on google scholar and an h-index of 147. He published papers, books, founded conferences, and holds positions at several institutions including RWTH Aachen University, Technical University of Eindhoven, Queensland University of technology, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and others. In addition to academic success, he is also very well known in the industry. The companies that brought his research to the industry are Celonis, Fluxicon Disco, Process Gold, and many others. Because of his influence, he is called a godfather of process mining.   The questions range from the history of process mining, the process mining challenges and solutions, to the future, and various topics connected to the real-world use of process mining.   The episode of long, so here are some time ticks to guide you: 0:00 When was the first time term process mining - (workflow mining) used? How did it appear? 5:00 Why workflow management systems were failures at the end of the 90s 5:30 Process mining vs data mining, machine learning 8:30 What are the main developments in science and industry in the last 20 years] 18:00 Does the industry follow research or it develops also new methods? - doing process mining is not like making a project 21:00 Is process mining aimed at improving how processes work, or to observe how it performs. 23:00 What do you think will happen in the next 10 years to process mining vs what will happen, 34:20 Prescriptive monitoring, recommender systems? 36:00 Machine learning vs formal methods for the future of process mining 38:00 Blockchain, RPA, drift detection, Repairing process models, Data Privacy and process mining 51:00 Are there mistakes you regret in your academic work? 53:00 What recommendations can you give to young researchers 59:00 Questions from entrepreneurs, would you advise creating new tools? 1:05:00 Resources for studying process mining   Resources mentioned in the episode: Wil's book: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662498507 MOOC: https://www.coursera.org/learn/process-mining    Find A SIDE OF DATA on twitter: https://twitter.com/ASideOFData And on the web: asideofdata.com SEND us an email with suggestions: asideofdata@protonmail.com