Your Systems Exception Log The Autobiography of Your De Facto Process
Published on: Sat Dec 24 2022 by Ivar Strand
Your System’s Exception Log: The Autobiography of Your De Facto Process
Organizations invest significant resources in attempting to understand their own operational workflows through interviews, process mapping workshops, and the review of procedural manuals. Yet, one of the most truthful, detailed, and underutilized sources of information on how an organization actually functions is often sitting, unexamined, on a server: the system’s error and exception log.
This log should not be viewed as a mere technical artifact for IT troubleshooting. It is, in effect, the system’s autobiography—a precise, time-stamped diary of every single instance where the messy reality of daily operations clashed with the clean, configured rules of the formal process.
The Log as a Record of De Jure vs. De Facto Conflict
A system’s exception log is a direct, empirical record of the gap between the de jure and the de facto. Each entry in the log signifies a moment of friction where a real-world event, user action, or piece of data did not conform to the system’s codified rules.
Consider a log entry that reads: Error: "Invalid Vendor ID" on payment request #12345. From a purely technical perspective, this is a data validation error. From a process perspective, it is a record of a staff member attempting to process a payment to a vendor who was not properly registered in the system. It is a data point that may indicate an inefficient vendor onboarding process, a need for user training, or even a deliberate attempt to circumvent a control. The log captures the de facto attempt against the de jure rule.
From Technical Noise to Operational Intelligence
For many organizations, these logs are treated as technical noise, of interest only when a system crashes. This is a significant missed opportunity. When aggregated and analyzed systematically, the patterns of exceptions can reveal more about an organization’s process health and control weaknesses than weeks of traditional interviews.
A core component of our data-forensic approach is the analysis of these logs. We are typically looking for several key patterns:
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High-Frequency, Low-Severity Exceptions. A specific error, such as “Incorrectly Formatted Project Code,” that appears hundreds of times per month is not a series of isolated user mistakes. It is a clear indicator of a systemic issue. The official (de jure) coding structure may be overly complex, the user training may be insufficient, or the user interface may be poorly designed.
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Exceptions Clustered by User, Role, or Department. A disproportionate number of exceptions originating from a specific team can be an indicator of a need for targeted training. It can also signify that the official process is particularly ill-suited to that team’s specific function, forcing them into repeated, failed attempts to find a workaround within the system.
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Unusual, High-Severity Exceptions. While high-frequency errors point to process friction, rare and critical alerts point to potential control failures. An exception such as
"Override of segregation of duties control by privileged user"is a red flag that requires immediate, targeted investigation. -
Exceptions Correlated with Exogenous Events. A pattern of transaction timeout errors that consistently correlates with periods of unstable local internet connectivity is a clear data point. It reveals that the system’s technical architecture may not be sufficiently resilient for the challenging operational environment in which it is deployed.
A New Lens for Monitoring
The systematic analysis of exception logs is a form of process mining. It uses the system’s own data to create an objective, evidence-based picture of an organization’s true operational pain points. It moves beyond asking people about their challenges and instead analyzes the documented history of the system’s own struggles.
An organization’s exception log is not a technical cost center. It is one of the richest and most honest datasets it owns. Learning to read the story it tells is a critical capability for any organization serious about continuous improvement, risk management, and genuine accountability.
