How can we use bottleneck analysis to figure out where our inefficiencies are? When should I use bottleneck analysis? What are some sneaky tips to using this helpful feature?! All will be answered and more!
Today's blog post we wanted to feature bottleneck analysis use cases. Mainly when and how we should be using it to help dig into our data!
We were working with someone recently and I was happy to see them immediately start building some interesting transition filters around their "On Hold" state. When I asked them what prompted them to go down this specific route for their analysis they mentioned something along the lines of "well we think this is what's causing a lot of our inefficiencies so I've been trying to find exactly where that's happening." I asked if our bottleneck analysis tool gave them any good leads and they responded with "what's that?".
We walked through the different features of bottleneck analysis and why it could be useful to test some of your initial hypotheses there before spending the rest of your day brute forcing your way to finding your main culprit. Needless to say they were ecstatic so I wanted to share the same with all of you!
Here is a quick video on how to achieve this with many examples or follow along below:
You can find other Process Mining use cases here
How to do the analysis
This approach can be applied to any workflow (Incident, HR Case, Customer Service Case, etc) and does not require any additional/special Process Mining configuration beyond the out of the box content packs offered with a given workflow
Open your project to the Analyst Workbench view:
So first thing, as you can see we have the Bottleneck Analysis button in the model options section. When we click this it will show us all our transitions in order of the most number of occurrences. We also get some stats presented to us to give us some quick info at a glance!
If we found a transition that looks very interesting to us we can dig into this even further. Each of these transitions that are displayed can be interacted with to filter your process map to show ONLY the records that have that transition. For example I only want to see the records that are moving from "In Progress" to "Awaiting Caller" because that seems to be a bottleneck worth exploring!
Just like that I have found a potential bottleneck in my lifecycle (in this case contributing to 23 years of inefficiencies that we can recapture) and applied it to my map!
Lastly a feature that isn't known about or used nearly as much as it should is the SEARCH functionality in bottleneck analysis. This is the perfect tool to help test your hypotheses or make sure there aren't many transitions you don't want to see.
When using bottleneck analysis you'll see the "Search Results" bar in the upper right hand corner. This can be used to filter on ONLY the state / assignment group / any activity you want to Analyze.
For example I only want to see the transitions from Closed - Anything that isn't closed. All I have to do is type "Closed" or "Closed -" and it will filter all results to only show me the transitions with Closed in them. A HUGE time saver instead of manually building these transitions yourself and analyzing them one at a time.
Bottleneck analysis is a super easy to use tool with Process Mining and in my opinion should be one of the FIRST things you look at when your process map first loads. It genuinely helps you hone in on what the potential problems can be and where you should really devote your time to exploring the data.
Thanks for reading and as always,
If you are looking for more in-depth training you can use the Process Mining Academy library of content
You can find other Process Mining use cases here
BelalA
