Object-Centric Processes are a new way to look at processes: instead understanding a process execution as a sequence of isolated steps in a monolithic case, an object-centric process describes how its activities work on the various involved and related objects over time.

This idea of describing processes as emerging from an interplay of changes to related objects has been discussed and developed in the BPM and Process Mining research community for many years. It (finally) became visible to a broad audience at Celonis’ Celosphere 2022 event where Object-Centric Process Mining (OCPM) took center stage.

OCPM fundamentally changes the way we are able to think and reason about processes. While it gives a better grasp on the “true nature” of a process, we also have to relearn the very basics of processes, models, and event data.

To help the BPM and Process Mining community get familiar with the fundamentals ideas that drive OCPM, the organizers of the Objects A-Z workshop that the BPM Conference 2023 in Utrecht invited me to give a tutorial-style presentation on the concept and potential of object-centric processes.

After the workshop, I re-recorded my presentation so it is also accessible to everyone who could not attend.

The talk highlights the core thinking and concepts that underly object-centric processes and explain what makes them effective in analyzing complex real-world processes.

• The first part of the talk looks back at key ideas from academic research that led to object-centric processes and object-centric process mining.
• The second part first explains the basic ideas and techniques of object-centric process mining and the new kinds of process analysis that are enabled by it. We then take a look under the hood of object-centric process mining and look at the key data structures and operations that make it work.
• In the third part, we show how these key ideas work for use cases that go far beyond object-centric process mining.

The talk points to ready-to-use Python libraries and public datasets and tutorials so that you can directly start doing research, development, and analysis in an object-centric approach.

If you rather want to browse the slides:

Object-Centric Processes – from cases to objects and relations… and beyond from Dirk Fahland

Want to know more?

If you want to dive deeper into the topic, you can start following the Online Course: Multi-Dimensional Process Analysis.