These approaches overlap, and product boundaries are changing. The practical question is not which label is best. It is which evidence you need to answer the operating question in front of you.
“Process discovery” can describe the broad activity of understanding a process. In this guide, interview-led discovery specifically means gathering accounts from people, supported by permitted documents and examples. Process mining and task mining add different kinds of observed activity.
Compare the starting evidence
| Method | Starting evidence | Useful question | Important limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interview-led discovery | Participant accounts, documents and examples | Why is this done, who owns it, and what happens outside the normal path? | Accounts can be incomplete, inconsistent or mistaken. |
| Process mining | Events from business systems | What process paths and timing patterns are visible in the recorded activity? | The result depends on event coverage, meaning and data quality. |
| Task mining | Captured desktop-level activity | How is a known task performed across applications? | The captured activity needs interpretation and appropriate collection boundaries. |
UiPath describes process mining as analysis of business-system event logs and task mining as analysis of desktop activity. It also treats them as complementary. UiPath: Task Mining FAQs
A worked decision: orders are taking too long
Suppose leadership sees late orders but the bottleneck is unclear. System records may show the time between milestones. Desktop capture may reveal repeated re-entry in a selected task. Participant interviews may explain why an exception leaves the standard system path.
Those observations answer different parts of the same question. The strongest review may combine them rather than choose a single method for every stage.
Start with a boundary and a hypothesis: “What prevents accepted orders from becoming ready for fulfillment?” Then identify the evidence needed to test it.
What an interview can add
A person can explain a decision rule, customer-specific exception or handoff that is not obvious in a log. That explanation is evidence of their account, not automatic proof of the rule. Compare it with the relevant work owner and supporting records.
Use the process discovery interview questions to elicit concrete examples instead of idealized process descriptions.
What observed activity can add
Repeated events or activity traces can help check whether the described process matches the available record. They may reveal variants that the interview did not mention. They still do not settle every question about intention, ownership or legitimate authority.
Avoid claims that process-mining platforms “cannot understand context” or that interviews reveal all the truth. Evaluate the actual product, evidence source and review workflow rather than a caricature of a category.
Where DutyGraph fits today
DutyGraph focuses on advisor-led collection of leadership context and private workforce responses, followed by reviewed duties, tasks, systems and handoffs. It is not being presented here as a process-mining engine, desktop-monitoring product or production authorization system.
Its intended role is to organize the human account of work and keep it connected to evidence and follow-up. That can support process mapping and AI opportunity assessment, whether or not other discovery tools are involved.
Questions to ask any provider
What evidence enters the system? Which outputs are observed facts, participant statements or AI inferences? How can an employee or process owner correct them? Can you inspect the source behind a step? How are privacy, access and retention handled? What remains after a map is exported?
For a broader technology search, use the work-discovery and delegation category guide. Vendor inclusion is not an endorsement or a claim of integration.
Choose one workflow before choosing a stack
When the evidence is scattered and the operating question is still unclear, start with a business operations audit. Agree which methods and sources fit that scope before installing more collection tools.