I had a wonderful demonstration recently of ServiceNow's process mining by a colleague in the wider Platform Architect team in the UK & Ireland (we love to share).
Part of the conversation was about how easy it is to just get started, especially where a process has a mining content pack.
Ok, I know that to really get the best out of it, there needs to be significant effort put in, but it did make me want to take a look at just how quickly I could get to the point where I could see the result, however simple, of a Mining project form a cold start.
I had an instance of ServiceNow that I had recently used to do a few HR case demos in. That might work nicely.
So first things first, I already have the process mining plugin enabled. Next step is to get the ServiceNow supplied Process Mining content packs installed
The first thing I then did, was dive straight into one of the template projects from All projects…
Opening the record, I get an info message suggesting that I use the Copy Project Definition - and I do as I'm told.
I call it "My HR Case". And, impatient as ever - then just hit "Mine Project (sample)".
Ok, I did try "Mine Project (Full)" first, but there is a restriction in place on my employee instance. Computer says no, so the sample version it has to be.
I then hit the "View in workspace" UI Action". Bingo.
Looks like the last few cases followed nothing but polite, happy paths through the state model.
Obviously that's expected with demo data and only a couple of dozen records. We will only start to see variations manifest themselves in our flow if they become more relevant statistically.
I have created a number of cases with the same variation. And we re mine.
We are only re running a small sample again; so the process is really quick. We can start to see (and zoom in and out of) variations in these state changes clearly now.
We have clear evidence now that cases are being reopened - moved back to WIP.
Obviously this doesn't even touch the surface of the capabilities of Process Mining. That wasn't the point of the article: I'm not implementation expert in this. The point was I got this running and giving me insights in under an hour.
The speed at which you can derive useful information about your processes is really impressive.
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