Process mining outputs a tester can use

You do not need to become a process mining analyst to use mining for test scoping. You need to read five things: the event log, variants, frequencies, exception paths and conformance results. This lesson explains each one, and which SAP Signavio product gives you which.

The event log

Process mining starts from an event log: one row per thing that happened to a case, with a case ID, an activity name and a timestamp, plus attributes. For order-to-cash, the case is usually the sales order (or order item); activities come from document creation and change records: order created, credit block set, credit released, delivery created, goods issue posted, invoice created, payment cleared. Attributes such as sales area, order type, customer, plant and net value let you slice the cases.

Variants, frequencies and exception paths

• Variant: one distinct sequence of activities. "Order, delivery, goods issue, invoice, payment" is one variant; the same with "credit block, credit release" inserted is another.
• Frequency: how many cases follow each variant, and their share of all cases. Mining tools sort variants by frequency so the top few usually cover most cases.
• Exception paths: rework and detours: changes after release, repeated blocks, cancellations, returns. They are often rare individually but expensive.
• Throughput times: how long cases take between activities, useful for spotting where defects in a new release would hurt most.
• Conformance: whether each case follows a reference model (a BPMN diagram), and where it deviates.

Where the events come from

For SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA, order-to-cash events are reconstructed from the documents and their history: sales order header and items (VBAK, VBAP), deliveries (LIKP, LIPS), billing documents (VBRK, VBRP), the document flow (VBFA) and change documents (CDHDR, CDPOS) for changes such as a price update or a credit release. Process Insights does this extraction with prebuilt content; in Process Intelligence the data model and event definitions are built for you or by your team. Either way, a tester should know where each activity comes from, because a missing change-document setting can make a real activity invisible.

1. Pick ten cases from the model across different variants.
2. Open each sales order in the system (VA03, or Manage Sales Orders F1873) and follow the document flow.
3. Compare the activities and timestamps with the event log for that case.
4. Record any missing or extra activity, and ask the model owner to explain it.
5. Only then use the variant numbers for scoping.

This ten-case check is a test of the mining model itself, and it takes an hour. Contoso's check found that order rejections were captured but rejection reasons were not, so Maria asked for the reason as an attribute before the cancellation scenario was designed.

Which SAP Signavio product gives you what

Two entry points cost little. The discovery edition of SAP Signavio Process Insights is a one-time, free analysis for customers covered by SAP maintenance: you extract a limited data set from SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA, send it to SAP and receive access to a tenant with performance indicators, process flows and blockers, and recommendations. The RISE with SAP starter pack (the Business Process Transformation starter pack) includes SAP Signavio Process Insights with a one-time data load, plus Process Manager and the Process Collaboration Hub for a limited number of users; the exact scope is in the RISE supplement for your contract. Continuous analysis and full mining are paid. Course sap-pow-306 covers the products from the process owner's chair.