Conformance rate

The output of the conformance calculation is the Conformance rate measure aggregated by average, with the two possible values 0.0 (non-conformant) and 1.0 (conformant). The conformance rate, for example, could have a value of 0,87, that is 87%, of all process instances available are conformant to the reference process.

The ARIS reference model establishes the order in which functions should be executed. This order is not a simple linear sequence, however, because the model may contain splitting AND rules. The branches emanating from such rules may be executed in parallel, so that there are many execution sequences that are compatible with such a rule. Joining rules, on the other hand, are synchronization points: They indicate that execution of all functions in the incoming branches must have terminated before any function that follows a joining rule is executed.

The conformance check converts a process instance into a linear sequence of functions. It then determines whether each step in the functional sequence corresponds to the order of these functions in the reference model. If one or more PPM functions are excluded from the conformance check, the corresponding functions are also removed from the sequence of functions of the process instance. If all functions have been excluded, PPM cannot calculate the conformance rate. Furthermore, in order to be considered conformant, the last step must terminate in one of the end events modeled for the process. This implies that unfinished processes (that is, processes that require further imports to be completed) are most likely classified as non-conformant.

The conformance check distinguishes between different reasons for the non-conformance of process instances.