The Discovery of the Implemented Software Engineering Process Using Process Mining Techniques

Process model guidance is an important feature by which the software process is orchestrated. Without complying with this guidance, the production lifecycle deviates from producing a reliable software with high-quality standards. Usually, teams break the process deliberately or impulsively. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools log what teams do even if they break the process. The log file could be a key to discover the behavior of the undertaken process against the targeted process model. Since the date of its introduction, Process Mining techniques have been used in business process domains with no focus on the software engineering processes. This research brings the Process Mining techniques to the software engineering domain. The research shows a conclusive effort that used a Scrum adapted process model as an example of Agile adoption. This research has applied Process Mining discovery techniques to capture the actually implemented process by the Scrum team. This application clarifies the gap between the standard process guidance and the actually implemented one. The research’s results showed that Process Mining techniques have the ability to discover and verify the deviation on both levels; the process itself as well as the work items state-machine workflows. Keywords—Process Mining; Process Models Discovery; Software Engineering; Agile; and Scrum