Explore process variants – Tekst

A variant is one distinct route through a process from Start to Stop. Most processes have many variants - the common "happy path" plus every variation cases actually take. The Variants sidebar lets you find, rank, and focus on the routes that matter. This article explains how to use it. For a refresher on the term, see the "Activities, variants, and the process map" article.

Opening the Variants sidebar

Open a process and select the Variants tab in the side panel. You will see a numbered list of variants, each showing the sequence of activities it follows and how many cases take that route.

Focusing with process coverage

Real data has a long tail of rare routes. The Process coverage slider lets you concentrate on the variants that account for most of your cases. Slide it up to include more variants (toward every route taken) or down to focus on just the most common few. This is the quickest way to cut through the noise and see the routes that represent the bulk of your work.

Ordering variants

Use the order selector to rank variants by what you care about:

Most to least common (and the reverse) to find the dominant routes or the rare edge cases.
Fastest to slowest or slowest to fastest, by average or median time, to find the quickest and the most time-consuming routes.

Filtering variants

The variants filter lets you narrow the list further:

Activities per variant - restrict to routes within a range of step counts, for example only the longer, more complex routes.
Contains activities - show only variants that include specific steps you select.

Selecting variants on the map

Select one or more variants to highlight them on the process map. Select all and Deselect all let you toggle the whole list at once, and Load more reveals additional variants beyond the first page. Highlighting a variant is the best way to trace a specific route visually and see exactly where it diverges from the main flow.

What to look for

The handful of variants that cover most cases - your real "standard" process.
Long or unusual variants that signal rework, back-and-forth, or exceptions.
Slow variants worth investigating, especially when paired with the throughput metrics described in the "Throughput time and setting a target" article.