Data from configuration management tools as sources for software process mining

Process mining has proven to be a valuable approach that provides new and objective insights into processes within organizations. Based on sets of well-structured data, the underlying ‘actual’ processes can be extracted and process models can be constructed automatically, i.e., the process model can be ‘mined’. Successful process mining depends on the availability of well-structured and suitable data. This paper investigates the potential of software configuration management (SCM) and SCM- tools for software process mining. In a validation section, data collected by a SCM tool in practice are used to apply process-mining techniques on a particular software process, i.e., a Change Control Board (CCB) process in a large industrial company. Application of process mining techniques revealed that although people tend to believe that formally specified and well-documented processes are followed, the ‘actual’ process in practice is different. Control-flow discovery revealed that in the CCB process in most of the cases, i.e., 70%, an important CCB task ‘Analysis’ was skipped.