  Process variant analysis aims at identifying and addressing the differences
existing in a set of process executions enacted by the same process model. A
process model can be executed differently in different situations for various
reasons, e.g., the process could run in different locations or seasons, which
gives rise to different behaviors. Having intuitions about the discrepancies in
process behaviors, though challenging, is beneficial for managers and process
analysts since they can improve their process models efficiently, e.g., via
interactive learning or adapting mechanisms. Several methods have been proposed
to tackle the problem of uncovering discrepancies in process executions.
However, because of the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge, the methods
and sorts of analysis in the literature are very heterogeneous. This article
not only presents a systematic literature review and taxonomy of methods for
variant analysis of business processes but also provides a methodology
including the required steps to apply this type of analysis for the
identification of variants in business process executions.
