Process conformance
Process conformance is the analysis of how well an observed event log matches a reference process model — measuring deviations, missing steps, and extra steps. Conformance checking surfaces where the actual process drifts from the intended process and quantifies the drift's frequency and cost.
Conformance is the complement to discovery. Discovery asks 'what is happening?'; conformance asks 'how does what's happening differ from what's supposed to happen?'. The output is typically a fitness score (0-1, how much of the log the model can replay), per-deviation counts (this step was skipped 230 times), and a visualisation overlay on the reference model. The pragmatic use: target the most-frequent deviations first, ask why they happen (process design problem? training gap? deliberate workaround?), and either fix the process or accept the deviation as the new normal.
Related terms
- 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.
- Conformance checking
Conformance checking is the formal process-mining technique of comparing an event log to a reference process model and producing fitness, precision, generalisation, and simplicity scores.
- Variant analysis
Variant analysis groups cases by the unique sequence of activities they followed and ranks variants by frequency and cost.