Variants¶

Up to this point you looked at the process flow as a whole. But you can also look at individual paths of the process flow using the Variants Report Page.

A process variant is a possible path through the process flow from start to finish. On this page, you can evaluate typical process key figures and analyzes that provide insight into the performance of your process in terms of variants.

Agenda

As main feature of the page you can see the Process Explorer. It displays process variants side-by-side (instead of an all-in-one process flow).
Next to the Process Explorer, you can see an overview of your variants in three different KPI cards. Furthermore, the distribution of your variants grouped by the number of process steps is visualized in a column chart. By clicking one or more bars of that column chart you can activate the Root Cause Analyzer, which is located right below.
On the right side, there is a navigation bar (similar to the other pages) including the PAFnow Pareto Visual.

Process Explorer¶

The PAFnow Process Explorer visualizes your business process automatically in a process flow. On the Variants Page it shows you the paths of individual variants instead of the whole process flow with all its branches:

Selections: In the Process Explorer you can select one or more (using CTRL) process steps or paths via left-click. The selected area is highlighted in other visuals. These selections will activate the PAFnow Root Cause Analyzer.

Variants Overview¶

Cards¶

Card	Meaning
	% Cases covered by Top 1 Variant Here you can see how many percent of business transactions (cases) are covered by the most common variant.
	Number of Variants This key figure shows you the absolute number of currently filtered and displayed cases and variants.
	% Unique Variants This key figure tells you what percentage of your variants are unique, that is, those which only one case passed through.

Variants Column Chart¶

Here you can see a classification of your process variants according to the number of process steps. In the example, 47 variants have more than 6 process steps, representing more than 59 percent of all variants.

Root Cause Analyzer¶

To not depend on a gut feeling or guessing games in case of a process anomalies, you can use the PAFnow Root Cause Analyzer. It delivers automatically generated principle insights to directly derive actions against a process problem or to find the driving forces of positive behaviors in your process.

The Root Cause Analyzer only starts an analysis when you select a process behavior/problem in a report element (table, pie chart, bar chart, etc.) or the Process Explorer. Then, the Root Cause Analyzer will start its AI-supported calculation of the causes.

You also find an example of the Root Cause Analyzer use below:

Example

You can display the causes (attribute forms/values) for a process behavior (positive or negative) by selecting a bar in the Column Chart.

In the example, we wanted to find out the most likely causes for variants with more than 6 process steps. Most probable root causes are a combination of the process flow being a Happy Path, no Loops nor Selfloops in the process sequence and a near zero process Automation Rate.

Tip

In the example above, the green bubbles were driving forces for the selected process behavior variants with more than 6 process steps. You can also display root causes based on inverse selection, showing the most likely commonalities based on everything but the selected fields. They show the opposite: the least likely causes for the occurrence of the process behavior. You can do this by clicking the small green square-switch in the top right corner of the Root Cause Analyzer card. In the example above, the red bubbles would be the driving forces for variants with lower numbers of process steps.

Selection for further analysis: Use the findings of the PAFnow Root Cause Analyzer to immediately start further analyzes within the report page. Select a cause (a bubble) within the Root Cause Analyzer which is applied to the entire Variants Page, so you can further analyze the evaluations based on your root cause findings and do not have to manually set filters yourself.

Through the navigation bar on the right side of the Report Page, you can further control the process flow to receive more targeted evaluations.

Average Lead Time

The Duration Card will show you your selected lead times, with a format as granular as you want it to be (in days, hours, minutes and seconds).

Treemap

Map	Meaning
	VARIANT IS UNIQUE This indicator split helps you to see the trends for unique and frequent variants separately.
	LONG DURATION Helps you to filter out variants with/without long/short durations.

Pareto¶

With the PAFnow Pareto Visual you can rate your process performance at one glance. According to the Pareto Principle, 80 percent of the results can be achieved with only 20 percent of the work. In terms of your process performance, this means that 20 percent of your variants should cover 80 percent of your cases to classify your process performance as "good". With PAFnow Pareto you can see if the Pareto Principle is met by your system and how much you deviate from the 80:20 ratio.

In the example, 13.92 percent of the variants cover 80.5 percent of your cases.

Outer Ring: The outer ring of the Pareto Visual indicates the 80 percent ratio and thus refers to the number of cases. Colored in green is the proportion of cases that are covered by 20 percent of the variants. Colored in red is the remaining portion that is still needed to reach 80 percent.

Inner Ring: The inner ring of the Pareto Visual shows the 20 percent ratio based on variants. The variants are sorted based on the number of cases they cover, in descending order.

Inner Circle: The top number in the inner circle indicates the percentage share of variants, covering the threshold value of 80 percent of cases. The bottom number indicates the exact percentage of cases covered by the variants listed above (and can thus be higher than 80 percent).