ZEIT2301 Design of Information Systems Functional Design: Activity Diagrams School of Engineering and Information Technology UNSW@ADFA Dr Kathryn Merrick

Topic 03: Activity Diagrams  Objectives  Understand and use the notation for activity diagrams, a form of functional modelling References Text: Ch 5

Modelling business processes with Activity Diagrams and Use cases  Activity Diagrams and Use Cases are useful tools for modelling business functions  Activity diagrams model the behaviour in a business process  Illustrate the business activities that are performed and how objects (data) move amongst them.

 Use Cases model the interaction of the system with its environment

Modelling business processes with Activity Diagrams  Activity diagrams can be used at different levels of abstraction to model    High-level business workflows that involve several Use cases The details of an individual Use case Specific details of an individual object method  eg how postage charges should be calculated for a product ordered online.

 Need to consider: destination (domestic, international), weight, dimensions, fragility, etc

Modelling business processes with Activity Diagrams  Activity diagrams are similar to traditional flow charts But…  include notation for modelling concurrent (parallel) activities  and complex decision processes

Creating Activity Diagrams  Determine the context or scope of the activity being modelled and then give the diagram an appropriate title.

 Identify the activities, control flows, and object flows (eg data, documents) that occur between the activities.

 Identify any decisions that are part of the process being modelled.

 Identify any prospects for parallelism in the process.

Activity Diagram: Notation

Activity Diagram: Notation

Sample Activity Diagram

Sample Activity Diagram with Swimlanes

Business Process Modelling  Business process models describe the activities that collectively support a business process  A very powerful tool for communicating the analyst’s current understanding of the requirements with the user

Business Process Modelling Example from BPMI.org

Summary  After today’s lecture you should be able to  Draw activity diagrams for simple business scenarios.