Abstract
Resource analysis is an emerging branch in process mining that aims to understand behavioral and structural aspects of resources in business processes. A problem of current resource analysis is its fragmentation. The spectrum of corresponding process mining techniques is diverse but scattered, with contributions often focusing on one or the other specific aspects. An overarching framework that could organize resource analysis, tie it to theoretical foundations, and, in turn, inform the development of new analytical methods is missing. In this work, we address this research problem by conducting a systematic literature review to organize the scattered landscape of the state-of-the-art resource analysis methods in process mining. Our work is guided by the question of what resource-related organizational and behavioral patterns can be analyzed with current methods. We classify the methods according to two aspects: what type of phenomenon was analyzed and what design principles were utilized in the development. Our findings highlight that most resource analysis methods in process mining are data-driven, developed to solve a specific business problem, or loosely based on resource analysis concepts from other disciplines. Some good examples of techniques defined for theoretical questions give directions for future research.
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Notes
- 1.
During the publication phase of this article, Martin and Beerepoot [38] published a similar study on resource analysis. However, we differ in two fundamental ways. First, [38] focus on resource analysis use cases, whereas we investigate behavioral constructs. Second, [38] have adopted a broader understanding of resource analysis, as they also examine adjacent resource-related areas, such as resource assignment and resource-aware process model discovery. Our study is, in contrast, more focused on the analytical aspect. Because of these slight differences in perspective, our findings complement each other.
- 2.
Index terms from Web of science, please see: https://webofscience.help.clarivate.com/en-us/Content/wos-core-collection/wos-full-record.htm (accessed: 2024-09-18).
- 3.
- 4.
We define a technique according to the classification framework of information systems development methodologies by Iivari et al. [33] as a “well-defined sequence of elementary operations that more or less guarantee the achievement of certain outcomes if executed correctly” [33, p. 186]. In other words, a technique could be a simple function, a metric, an algorithm, or similar. A technique is to be differentiated from higher abstraction levels development methodologies starting with methodologies, continuing with approaches, and after that paradigms on the highest level [33, p. 186]. In the context of resource analysis, examples of techniques are the handover of work metrics by Aalst et al. [3] and the competence measure by Huang et al. [30, pp. 6461-6462]. We use the terms technique and method interchangeably in this article.
- 5.
https://scopus.com (accessed: 2024-09-18).
- 6.
We refer to a concept as a resource-related behavioral pattern that an author aims to measure, directly or indirectly, using some technique. In the literature, other termonologies are often used and sometimes interchangeably, such as notion, construct, or perspective.
- 7.
All concepts starting with the term execution are umbrella terms for multiple metrics with or without specific concept names. An example is Pika et al. [44], who propose multiple execution frequency metrics to measure the concept utilization, such as the indicators “activity completions” and “number of case completions” to count the instance involvement of a resource on an activity and case level respectively [44, p. 1:9].
- 8.
Performance and productivity are often used interchangeably in the literature. Yet, we aimed to separate these concepts.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Joint work refers to metrics based on “joint activities” or “joint cases” (cf., [3, p. 560]).
- 12.
Entity discovery is an umbrella term. The methods in this category are commonly named after the type of entity they discover.
- 13.
- 14.
In a strict sense, the Yerkes-Dodson law is not a theory but an empirical phenomenon in psychology (cf., [22]) based on the original findings by Yerkes and Dodson [60]. Nonetheless, the phenomenon is well-studied and has a long history in the psychological literature, often characterized as a U-curve-shaped model (cf., [22]). Hence, we have treated the law as a theory for our purposes.
- 15.
https://promtools.org (accessed: 2024-09-18).
- 16.
https://processintelligence.solutions (accessed: 2024-09-18).
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The research of the authors was supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin under grant EPP-2019-524, by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under grant 16DII133, and by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant 496119880.
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Rubensson, C., Pufahl, L., Mendling, J. (2025). A Conceptual Framework for Resource Analysis in Process Mining. In: Kaczmarek-Heß, M., Rosenthal, K., Suchánek, M., Da Silva, M.M., Proper, H.A., Schnellmann, M. (eds) Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing. EDOC 2024 Workshops . EDOC 2024. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 537. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-79059-1_12
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