7856 BIS 07 Business Process Mapping ActivityModeling

7/30/2019 7856 BIS 07 Business Process Mapping ActivityModeling

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Elements of an Activity Diagram

Guidelines for Creating Activity Diagrams

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A number of activities support abusiness process across several

departments Activity diagrams model the behavior

in a business process

› Sophisticated data flow diagrams

› Addresses Parallel concurrentactivities and complex processes

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Essentially a flow chart – showing flow of control

from activity to activity Models the dynamic aspects of systems

Focus is the work performed in implementation of

an operation or the activities in a use-caseinstance

Variant of a state diagram with a slightly different

purpose

› To capture actions (work and activitiesperformed)

› And the results of the actions (in terms of

object-state changes) 4



The states in the activity diagram – calledaction-states transition directly to the next

stage when the action in the state isperformed

Unlike the normal state diagrams – the

events are not specified Another difference is that their actions may

be placed in swimlanes

A swimlane groups activities w.r.t.:› Who is responsible for the activities, or

› Where the activities reside in an

organization 5



An activity diagram is an alternative wayof describing interactions which expresses

› How actions are taken› What they do (change object states)

› When they take place (action

sequences)› Where they take place (swimlanes)

Has a start point and an end point

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Activity diagrams may be used for differentpurposes

› To capture the work (actions) that will beperformed when an operation isexecuting – the instance of an operation

implementation. The most commonusage of activity diagrams

› To capture the internal work of an object

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› To show how a set of related actionsmay be performed, and how they will

affect objects around them› To show how an instance of a use-

case may be performed in terms of

actions and object state changes› To show how a business works in terms

of workers (actors), workflows,

organization and objects

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An activity is an ongoing nonatomicexecution.

Contents:

Distinguishes activity diagrams from allother kinds of diagrams

› Action states and activity states

› Transitions

› Objects

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Action States:

Are atomic

Cannot be decomposed – the actionstate is not interrupted by any event

Considered to take insignificantexecution time

Eg, submit plan, initialize, increment etc

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Can be further decomposed

Nonatomic – may be interrupted Take some time to complete

Can be thought of as a composite – madeup of other activity states and action states

Eg, process bill, prepare purchase order etc

An action state is a special case of an activitystate

An action state is an activity state thatcannot be further decomposed

Zoom into the details of an activity state; you

will find another activity diagram 11



When the action or activity of a state

completes, flow of control passesimmediately to the next action or activitystate

This flow is specified by using transitions, which

show the path from one action or activitystate to the next action or activity state

A simple directed line represents this

Semantically these are calledtriggerless/completion transitions

The flow of control continues indefinitely› In case of an infinite activity, or

› Until a stop state is encountered 12



As in a flow chart, branches can be

included

This specifies alternate paths takenbased on some Boolean expression

Branches are represented as a diamond A branch may have one incoming

transition and two or more outgoing

ones Guard conditions are placed on each

outgoing transition

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When modeling workflows of business

processes we might encounter concurrentflows

We use a synchronization bar to specify

forking and joining of these parallel flows ofcontrol

Represented as a thick horizontal/vertical line

Fork and join should balance – number offlows leaving a fork should match the number of flows that enter its corresponding join

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When modeling workflows of business processes, it isuseful to partition the activity states into groups

Each group represents a component of the businessorganization responsible for a set of activities

Each group is called a swim-lane

Separated from its neighbour by a vertical line, each

group specifies a locus of activities Each swim-lane has a unique name, and represents

a real-world entity

Each swim-lane may be implemented by one or

more classes In an activity diagram partitioned into swim-lanes,

every activity belongs to exactly one swim-lane

Transitions may cross lanes

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Objects may be involved in the flow ofcontrol associated with an activity diagram

Objects can be shown explicitly in an activitydiagram using a dependency notation,connected to the relevant activity or

transition that creates, destroys, or modifiesthese objects

This use of dependency relationships and

objects is called an object flow because itrepresents the participation of an object in aflow of control

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In addition to participation, we can alsoshow how an object’s role, state and

attribute values change

State of an object can be shown bynaming it in square brackets below the

object’s name Attributes values are shown in attributes’

compartment below object’s name

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Common Uses:

Activity diagrams model the dynamic aspectsof a system

Typically, used in two ways To model a workflow:

› Focus on activities as viewed by actors

that interact and collaborate with thesystem

› Workflows are used to visualize, specify,construct, and document businessprocesses involving the system we aredeveloping

› Here, modeling object flow is of

particular importance 21

T d l ti



To model an operation:

› Here, activity diagrams are used asflowcharts

› Models the details of a computation

›

Modeling of branch, fork, and join statesis very important

› The context of the activity diagram,here, involves the parameters of theoperation and local objects

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Customer Sales Accounting Warehouse



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Customer Sales Accounting Warehouse



Establish a focus for the workflow. May not be

possible to show all the workflows in onediagram

Select the business objects that have high-level responsibilities for the overall workflow.These may be real things from the vocabularyof the system, or may be abstract entities

Create a swimlane for each important

business object

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Identify the preconditions of theworkflow’s initial state and the post-

conditions of the workflow’s final state.This helps to model the boundaries of theworkflow

Starting at the workflow’s initial state,specify the activities and actions thattake place over time and show them inthe activity diagram as either activity

states or action states

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An activity diagram can be attached to anymodeling element for visualizing, specifying,constructing, and documenting that element’sbehaviour.

We can attach activity diagrams to classes,

interfaces, components, nodes, use cases, andcollaborations.

The most common element to model is anoperation.

Here, it is simply a flowchart of an operation’sactions. But, the primary advantage is itssemantic richness. Any other operation/signalfrom another object can be represented along

with type checking. 27





Collect the abstractions involved in thisoperation, including the parameters and the

return types.

Identify the preconditions at the operation’sinitial state and the post conditions at the

operation’s final state. Also identify theinvariants of the enclosing class that musthold during the execution of the operation

Starting at the operation’s initial state, specifythe activities and actions that take placeover time and show them in the activitydiagram as either activity states or action

states. 28



Use branching (as applicable) to specifyconditional paths and iteration

If the operation is owned by an activeclass, use forking and joining to showparallel flows of execution

Ex: An activity diagram for ComputingFibonacci numbers

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7856 BIS 07 Business Process Mapping ActivityModeling

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