Hypothetical Activities: Looking at the Negative Space

Happy October and welcome to another Feature Highlight! This month we have another feature hot off the presses of our development team – Hypothetical Activities. This is the first in a series of features we’re releasing to help you visualise and categorize your process flow by mapping specific patterns to a taxonomy – but more on that in later highlights! Hypothetical Activities are activities that that could have occurred, but didn’t, but whose absence is not a process violation. That is, “optional” activities that are sometimes done, but don’t necessarily have to be, for the process to be compliant.

What can we use them for? We have some examples below. Let’s have a look!

Using the Feature

Here we see the Causal Hypothesis of our test Dimension. This is important because this defines all the possible activities that can occur in this Dimension – which is what we then use to compare our specific process runs against to find Hypothetical Activities.

Now, we’ve gone over to the Process View Analyzer and selected a Variant that starts at Order Received and runs the entire length of the process, including all three Payment Reminder steps. But look – if you compare this to the Causal Hypothesis above, we notice that something is missing.

By turning on Hypothetical Activities, we can see that the process doesn’t have to begin at the Order Received step – it could begin at the Offer Sent step! This is important context information, since that affects evaluations of process run length and execution time and helps us mentally model this process run to figure out which real-world cases it represents.

Now, let’s have a look at a different Variant – in this case, we have the Offer step, but we don’t have every Reminder step, and in the middle of the process we also traverse a Shortcut. By turning on Hypothetical Activities, we can see how many reminder steps were missed during the process, and we can see which steps are skipped by the shortcut. If the customer pays without reminder (which is our ideal case), and we don’t need the manual labour of the skipped steps in the middle, the process will probably be faster, and therefore more efficient. This feature helps visualise what efficiencies are gained by going along these shorter routes – in this case, 5 entire activities, which is a significant portion of the total process.

 Finally, we can look at this in the Case View – here, we have a splitting process where both shortcuts and long routes are taken in different branches. In this example, we can compare how fast each branch of the process ran, which is a good starting point for a like-for-like comparison of efficiency gains from eliminating process steps, seeing the hypothetical activities helps us visualise just that.

Real-World Use Cases

Hypothetical Activities can be a powerful tool for managers and business owners to optimize workflows, streamline operations, and even strategize process improvements. Here are a few ways this feature can bring practical value:

1. Identifying Cost-Saving Opportunities:

• By visualizing which optional steps are frequently skipped, businesses can gauge the impact on operational costs. For example, if multiple steps in a customer order process (such as reminder emails) are not consistently required, eliminating or automating these activities could lead to lower labor costs and reduce processing time.
• In financial processes, Hypothetical Activities can reveal areas where certain compliance checks are optional but are sometimes performed. Understanding these helps organizations better allocate resources for necessary vs. optional activities.

2. Analyzing Customer Journey Variability:

• Hypothetical Activities allow businesses to see where customers might deviate from the typical journey without impacting overall outcomes. For example, in a sales process, if a subset of customers skips an initial inquiry step and proceeds directly to a consultation, that could highlight a more efficient path for certain customer segments. This comparison provides a baseline for measuring time saved by omitting non-essential steps, giving organizations concrete data to inform process optimization initiatives.

3. Benchmarking Process Efficiency:

• When evaluating process efficiency, Hypothetical Activities offer insight into the differences between the fastest and slowest paths. For instance, in a supply chain, managers can examine which activities are frequently bypassed in expedited cases, allowing them to benchmark these against standard routes.

Conclusion

Hypothetical Activities don’t help us find new problems with our processes, but they do help keep cognitive load at a minimum when looking at highly complex process models and let you focus on the stuff that matters. That’s our goal – to help you create transparency in your processes without the migraine of having to manage the complexity in your head.

The observant and curious among you may have immediately asked the question – if these are the process steps that are skipped without causing a violation, what happens with process steps that are skipped as part of a violation, such as when a necessary step is simply not done. We’ll cover that next month in our highlight on Omitted Activities, which are a visualisation of precisely this.

We’ve got plenty more of these visualisation & categorization support features in the pipeline – stay tune and keep an eye on our blog to keep up with them. And if this looks like something that could help you wrap your head around the complexities of your own business, do reach out to us and book a demo. We’ll be glad to chat about your specific circumstances and how we can use Noreja Process Intelligence to make your processes leaner, meaner machines.

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