In system alignments we trust! Explainable alignments via projections

Alignments are a well-known process mining technique for reconciling system logs and normative process models. Evidence of certain behaviors in a real system may only be present in one representation – either a log or a model – but not in the other. Since processes involve multiple entities, such as objects and resources performing different tasks with objects, the interaction of these entities must be taken into account in the alignments. Additionally, both logged and modeled representations of reality may be imprecise and only partially represent some of these entities, but not all. In this paper, we introduce the concept of “relaxations” through projections for alignments to deal with partially correct models and logs. Relaxed alignments help to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content of the two representations (the log and the model) to achieve a better understanding of the underlying process and expose quality issues.