I hate just how limited Process Mining feels beyond the Process Explorer map.
How can PM consultants be expected to identify opportunities to improve a process when the people operating it may have years of experience and a much deeper understanding of its practical realities? What unique information does Process Mining provide that materially changes the decisions those people make?
I have been assigned to the Process Mining Team and have been struggling ever since to find its usefulness beyond the process map. Many of the other analyses and dashboards I build seem reproducible using regular reporting and analytics tools, which makes me question what the incremental value of Process Mining actually is.
I have also struggled to find case studies that clearly explain the complete chain from a Process Mining analysis to a specific business intervention and then to a quantified business outcome. Many case studies describe the problem and the eventual improvement, but I rarely see exactly how the Process Mining analysis itself led to the decision that produced the improvement.
Conformance checking also doesn't make much sense to me in many situations. Why should it matter that the observed process doesn't match the designed approach if the deviation does not result in worse outcomes? A deviation from the designed process isn't necessarily a problem unless there is some evidence that it affects efficiency, quality, cost, risk, or another meaningful business outcome.
If I keep asking "So what?" questions for each insight that comes from these tools, many of them don't seem to inform any specific action. Implementation ultimately rests with the business, and the people operating the process are the ones who understand how practical a particular change actually is.
So, beyond describing what is happening in a process, I am struggling to see where Process Mining consistently provides enough additional value to justify itself over conventional reporting and analytics.