Activity prediction in process mining using the WoMan framework

Process Management techniques are useful in domains where the availability of a (formal) process model can be leveraged to monitor, supervise, and control a production process. While their classical application is in the business and industrial fields, other domains may profitably exploit Process Management techniques. Some of these domains (e.g., people’s behavior, General Game Playing) are much more flexible and variable than classical ones, and, thus, raise the problem of predicting which activities will be carried out next, a problem that is not so compelling in classical fields. When the process model is learned automatically from examples of process executions, which is the task of Process Mining, the prediction performance may also provide indirect indications on the correctness and reliability of the learned model. This paper proposes and compares two strategies for activity prediction using the WoMan framework for workflow management. The former proved to be able to handle complex processes, the latter is based on the classic and consolidated Naïve Bayes approach. An experimental validation allows us to draw considerations on the pros and cons of each, used both in isolation and in combination.