Space odyssey for Love, Success and Happiness

Chapter 2 - The first challenge: Exposure

If you want to know how it came about that the brave asteroid miner Will has to pass this first challenge in order to win the hand of Lilja, the beautiful daughter of the planet ruler, and become the ruler of the most successful planet of this galaxy himself, the first part of the story of the search for love, success and happiness in the infinite expanse of space is recommended.

After Will agreed to undergo the five challenges, the planetary ruler looked at him thoughtfully and said, "Will, the basis of our planetary business are processes, that is, the way we do things. Processes are ubiquitous and whoever masters them is almost omnipotent. In my childhood, it was still very easy to become familiar with processes. Back then, we worked primarily with paper, and so all you had to do was follow the files to understand how a process worked. But when I was the junior planetary ruler, still a young boy, the guild of process and systems consultants stopped by our planet and convinced my father to digitize the processes. They promised boundless efficiency and that we would thus manage to operate more economically than all other planets for a long time. And even though the implementation of the planetary ERP system took twice as long and cost three times as much as promised, they managed to digitize all relevant processes. They were actually running very efficiently, but as if by magic they had disappeared. Well, actually they hadn't disappeared, but they had become invisible because everything was just running in the systems. And I have already explained to you that the secret of our success is not to be good, but to become better and better every single day. But how can you improve something that you can't see and understand?" The planetary ruler took a deep breath and continued, "My dear Will, your first task is to make these invisible processes visible again. I want to know how we actually work. If you can do that, I will give you the second challenge. If not, the accounting department will be waiting for you with rooms full of unchecked travel expense reports!"

Will was initially frightened by the gravity of the task. How should he make something invisible visible again? Should he run away or resign himself to the travel expense reports right away? But a quick glance at Lilja gave him courage to face this task. And he already had an idea how he would do it.

The next day, he gathered the people directly involved in one of the most important processes, the procurement of food for the planetary ruler's beloved space carp, and had each one record and describe the process. With each depiction, however, Will became more exasperated because it seemed that the employees were not working on the same process, but on entirely different processes. Each depicted the process differently and spoke of different difficulties, much as he or she perceived those difficulties from his or her own perspective. By the end of the day, brave Will had more process representations than participants in his workshop, and the sure feeling that none of the representations matched reality. And so slowly it dawned on him what a challenge the planetary ruler had presented him with. In his mind, he could already see himself sitting in front of mountains of travel expense reports, checking them and entering them into the system. What a horrible thought.

But when he saw himself sitting in front of the computer like that, an idea came to him. Wasn't it the case that each of these entries would be logged in the system? Everyone would be able to see afterwards when he had processed which statement. And if that was the case for the travel expense reports, was it any different for the orders for space carp food? No, of course not! Surely something could be made of this.

For the next two weeks, Will ate and slept very little. He worked day and night on the computer and finally found a way to make the underlying process visible from the digital traces that were left behind when the food was ordered. Actually, it wasn't hard at all. All he had to do was look at which time stamps were left for each order and assign activity labels to these time stamps based on other data. And then when he sorted those activities by time, it became a process. And what worked for a single order worked for all the other orders. In the end, Will had a representation from the computer screen that he didn't want to believe at first. Could it really be that a single process could actually be executed so differently? But yes, this process actually had hundreds of variations, and not every variation met the planetary ruler's specifications. Out of love for his carp, the planetary ruler insisted on personally reviewing each order and having it approved by a space carp specialist. But sometimes things had to be done quickly, and so it happened that the steps were made up after the order was placed, or sometimes they were skipped altogether.

When Will presented the results to the planetary ruler, he became very quiet and thoughtful before saying, "Will, you have more than exceeded my expectations. You have succeeded in what many representatives of the consultants' guild have cut their teeth on. I finally see how the processes work. You have performed the miracle of making them visible. I now understand why sometimes food is delivered that does not taste good to my space carp and which I cannot even remember ordering. Finally I have transparency again. Bravo! You have successfully passed the first challenge and for the moment you are spared the travel expenses. But please tell me what you call this miracle technology that makes the invisible visible again?"

This question caught Will completely off guard; he hadn't even thought about it. He had actually done what he had already done as a planetary miner; he had also mined something valuable, from which he could then make something. Well, it was data from processes and not the rubble on an asteroid, but in principle it was the same. And then he had an idea: "My planet ruler, I call this technology 'Process Mining'.

The planetary ruler nodded with satisfaction and said, "That's a good and very appropriate name.". Then he continued, "Then let's talk about the second challenge now, because I do see added value in transparency, but just from the pictures I can't see and decide what needs to be changed to make us better tomorrow than we are today."

And for those who would now like to know what the second task was for the brave asteroid miner Will, the continuation of the story of the search for love, success and happiness in the infinite depths and vastness of space cab be found here .