Purpose: The purpose of the Activity Diagram is to show the overall flow of control through workflows for computational and organizational processes using the UML standard.
Core concerns: The Activity Diagram enables you to document stepwise activities and actions with support for choice, iteration and concurrency. The template allows you to connect the following objects using either Control Flows, Object Flows or Exception Handlers:
Below, you can see two different examples of an Activity Diagram. The first illustrates a structure for an ideation process, the second shows the process for Booking an order – divided into two different Activity Partitions:
Relation to other templates: The Activity Diagram can be used instead of a Workflow Diagram or a Business Process Diagram, though the different languages have their own pros and cons. The Activity Diagram is part of the UML templates QualiWare supports along with the Communication Diagram, Deployment Diagram, Class Diagram, Composite Structure Diagram, State Diagram, Package Diagram, Component Diagram, Sequence Diagram, Use case diagram and Timing Diagram.
Properties and metadata: The Activity Diagram can for example retain the following information:
- A description of the diagram
- Link to the owner of the diagram
- Link to the one responsible for the diagram
- Audits (auto generated information regarding its current state and access rights)
- Extensions: Stereotypes, constraints and tagged values
- Associated documents, diagrams and other objects
- Inherent Risk detailing risk considerations
- Governance information detailing information about the published diagram and who has been involved in the approval of the diagram
The above picture shows the properties dialogue window for the Activity Diagram where you can view and edit the diagram’s properties in QualiWare Lifecycle Manager.
For more information: about the UML and Activity Diagram, please visit the Object Management Group’s Website, where you can find the complete specification.