1. ZEIT2301 Design of Information Systems
Topic 02: Project Initiation
ZEIT2301 Design of Information Systems Functional Design: Activity Diagrams
School of Engineering and Information Technology
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Session 2, 2010

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. Activity Diagram: Notation

8. Activity Diagram: Notation

9. Sample Activity Diagram

10. Sample Activity Diagram with Swimlanes

11. 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

12. Business Process Modelling
Example from BPMI.org

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