Aligning observed and modelled behaviour by maximizing synchronous moves and using milestones

Given a process model and an event log, conformance checking aims to relate the two together, e.g. to detect discrepancies between them. For the synchronous product net of the process and a log trace, we can assign different costs to a synchronous move, and a move in the log or model. By computing a path through this (synchronous) product net, whilst minimizing the total cost, we create a so-called optimal alignment – which is considered to be the primary target result for conformance checking. Traditional alignment-based approaches (1) have performance problems for larger logs and models, and (2) do not provide reliable diagnostics for non-conforming behaviour (e.g. bottleneck analysis is based on events that did not happen). This is the reason to explore an alternative approach that maximizes the use of observed events. We also introduce the notion of milestone activities, i.e. unskippable activities, and show how the different approaches relate to each other. We propose a data structure, that can be computed from the process model, which can be used for (1) computing alignments of many log traces that maximize synchronous moves, and (2) as a means for analysing non-conforming behaviour. In our experiments we show the differences of various alignment cost functions. We also show how the performance of constructing alignments with our data structure relates to that of the state-of-the-art techniques