RuM: Declarative Process Mining, Distilled

Flexibility is a key characteristic of numerous business process management domains. In these domains, the paths to fulfil process goals may not be fully predetermined, but can strongly depend on dynamic decisions made based on the current circumstances of a case. A common example is the adaptation of a standard treatment process to the needs of a specific patient. However, high flexibility does not mean chaos: certain key process rules still delimit the execution space, such as rules that prohibit the joint administration of certain drugs in a treatment, due to dangerous interactions. A renowned means to handle flexibility by design is the declarative approach, which aims to define processes through their core behavioural rules, thus leaving room for dynamic adaptation. This declarative approach to both process modelling and mining involves a paradigm shift in process thinking and, therefore, the support of novel concepts and tools. Complementing our tutorial with the same title, this paper provides a high-level introduction to declarative process mining, including its operationalisation through the RuM toolkit, key conceptual considerations, and an outlook for the future.