What makes life for process mining analysts difficult? A reflection of challenges

Over the past few years, several software companies have emerged that offer process mining tools to assist enterprises in gaining insights into their process executions. However, the effective application of process mining technologies depends on analysts who need to be proficient in managing process mining projects and providing process insights and improvement opportunities. To contribute to a better understanding of the difficulties encountered by analysts and to pave the way for the development of enhanced and tailored support for them, this work reveals the challenges they perceive in practice. In particular, we identify 23 challenges based on interviews with 41 analysts, which we validate using a questionnaire survey. We provide insights into the relevancy of the process mining challenges and present mitigation strategies applied in practice to overcome them. While mitigation strategies exist, our findings imply the need for further research to provide support for analysts along all phases of process mining projects on the individual level, but also the technical, group, and organizational levels.