Important Dates (Anywhere on Earth)
| Milestone | Date |
| Call opens | 1 May 2026 |
| Proposal submission deadline | 30 May 2026 |
| Notification of selected challenge(s) | 15 June 2026 |
| Dataset & challenge brief finalization | 30 September 2026 |
| Hackathon period (remote) | 1–31 January 2027 |
| Final pitches at ICPM 2027 – Industry Day | February 2027 |
1. What is the ICPM 2027 Hackathon?
The ICPM Hackathon is a community-driven, data-centric competition where multidisciplinary teams analyze real-world event data to produce actionable insights and concrete improvement opportunities for an organization.
Building on the successful format of the ICPM 2025 Hackathon — a remote sprint followed by live final pitches on Industry Day — ICPM 2027 will host an official Hackathon as a central part of its Industrial Program.
To make this happen, we need you. We invite companies, public administrations, consultancies, vendors, and academic–industry collaborations to propose a challenge: a real dataset and a set of business questions for competing teams to tackle.
2. Who Should Submit a Proposal?
We welcome submissions from any organization with real process data and a genuine improvement question, including:
- Industry organizations (any sector), including process mining vendors and consulting firms — provided the challenge is grounded in a real operational setting
- Public sector institutions and agencies
- Research labs or academic groups in partnership with a data-owning organization
- Non-profit organizations with process data and improvement objectives
3. What Makes a Strong Challenge?
The best proposals combine a compelling story with rich, analyzable data. A strong submission typically includes:
A meaningful process improvement narrative — why this process matters, what decisions are at stake, and what value better insights could unlock.
Well-defined business questions, for example:
- Performance, throughput, and SLA compliance
- Bottlenecks, rework, and waste identification
- Process variants and case segmentation (customer groups, channels, case types)
- Resource and organizational differences (sites, teams, offices)
- Compliance, deviations, and risk indicators
- Opportunities for automation, standardization, or policy redesign
A dataset that supports multiple levels of analysis — descriptive, diagnostic, and ideally prescriptive.
4. Data Requirements
Proposed datasets should ideally be:
- In a standard event log format — XES, CSV, or Parquet, with at minimum: case identifier, activity name, and timestamp. Additional attributes (resource, role, location, channel, cost, outcome, etc.) are strongly encouraged.
- Substantive in size and complexity — enough cases and variability to support interesting, multi-faceted findings.
- Legally shareable — the provider must have the right to distribute the data to registered hackathon participants under explicit conditions, with appropriate anonymization/pseudonymization and regulatory compliance.
- Documented in English — including a dataset description, attribute glossary/data dictionary, and business context.
Cannot share raw data? We understand. Proposals may alternatively include:
- A strongly anonymized version
- A partially masked or aggregated version
- A realistically generated synthetic dataset — provided it preserves key process characteristics and supports meaningful business questions
5. What We Ask of Selected Challenge Providers
Selected challenge providers will be expected to:
- Deliver the final dataset package by the agreed deadline, including: dataset file(s), data dictionary, a 1–3 page process context description, and a list of business questions (with optional success criteria).
- Participate in at least one online Q&A session during the hackathon period to support competing teams.
- (Strongly encouraged) Nominate a representative to join the jury for the final pitches at ICPM 2027.
6. What ICPM 2027 Offers Challenge Providers
Providing a challenge is an opportunity, not just a contribution. As a challenge provider you will receive:
- Visibility to the global process mining community — researchers, practitioners, vendors, and customers from around the world
- Diverse, creative analyses of your own process data, produced by motivated multidisciplinary teams competing for recognition
- A dedicated presentation slot during the ICPM 2027 Industry Day for final team pitches on your challenge
- Public acknowledgment as “ICPM 2027 Hackathon Challenge Provider” on the conference website and all event materials
Additional incentives — such as sponsored awards, prizes, or follow-up workshops — can be discussed with the Industrial Program Chair.
7. What to Submit
Please submit a single PDF (max 4 pages, excluding optional appendices) structured as follows:
A. Challenge Overview
- Title of the challenge
- Proposing organization or consortium
- Contact person(s): name, email, affiliation
- Short abstract (150–250 words)
B. Business Context
- Process domain and high-level process description
- Why the challenge matters (operational, compliance, cost, customer experience, risk, etc.)
- Intended audience for the insights (process owners, CIO, operations managers, compliance teams, etc.)
C. Data Description
- Data source(s) and time span covered
- Estimated size (number of cases, events, and distinct activities)
- Event log schema and available attributes
- Anonimization approach and any sharing constraints
- Preferred format(s) and tooling constraints, if any
D. Business Questions
- 3–8 core questions
- Optional open-ended “stretch questions”
E. Feasibility and Support
- Confirmation that you can share the dataset under hackathon conditions
- Availability for Q&A during the hackathon period
- Whether you can join the jury and/or deliver a short intro at the final session
F. Optional Appendix
- A sample log snippet (anonymized if needed) and a draft data dictionary
8. Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated on:
- Business relevance and potential impact — for both the provider and the broader community
- Dataset quality and richness — ability to support multiple types of analysis
- Clarity of the challenge statement and questions
- Feasibility — legal and organizational ability to share data on time
- Novelty and interest for the process mining research and practitioner community
9. How to Submit
Send your proposal and any inquiries to:
Industrial Program Chairs
10. Data Usage Conditions
All shared datasets will be used exclusively for the ICPM 2027 Hackathon. Registered teams are bound by explicit terms prohibiting redistribution of data beyond their team and beyond the hackathon timeframe, unless explicitly authorized in writing by the challenge provider.
Industry Chairs
- Aseef Khaleel, Shell PLC
- Francesco Calimeri, University of Calabria, Italy
- Paolo Ceravolo, University of Milan, Italy