Petri net
A Petri net is a mathematical modelling language for distributed systems using places (states), transitions (events), and tokens (markers showing current state). Petri nets are the formal foundation of most process discovery algorithms because they precisely model concurrency, choice, and synchronisation in a way BPMN approximates informally.
Petri nets matter to practitioners because they're the lingua franca of process-mining academic literature: the algorithms operate on Petri nets internally and convert to BPMN for display. The mathematical precision lets discovery algorithms make formal guarantees (soundness, completeness, fitness) that informal notations can't support. Most operators never interact with Petri nets directly — process mining tools render BPMN — but understanding the underlying model helps interpret why certain process structures discover well (sequential paths, clear gateways) and others discover poorly (heavily parallel work, unbounded loops).
Related terms
- BPMN
Business Process Model and Notation is the ISO 19510 standard for graphically representing business processes as flowcharts.
- Process discovery
Process discovery is the process-mining technique of constructing a process model (typically BPMN or a Petri net) from an event log without prior knowledge of the intended process.
- Event log
An event log is the chronological record of activities executed in a process, structured so each row represents one event (case ID, activity name, timestamp, optional resource).