Business Process and

Functional Modeling
DR. AHMED ALSHAMERI
Introduction
▪ Functional models describe business processes and the interaction of
an information system with its environment.
▪ Now, begin the process of turning the information that is gathered using
requirements-gathering techniques into functional models: use-cases
and activity diagrams.
▪ Activity diagrams and use cases are logical models.
▪ Logical Models: describe the business domain’s activities without
suggesting how they are conducted.
- independent of how the activities are implemented (manual or
computerized)

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Introduction Cont.
▪ Use-case is developed from requirements:
- Represents the way a business system interacts with its environment.
- Can document the current system (i.e., as-is system) or the new system
being developed (i.e., to-be system).
- Includes a diagram and a description to depict the discrete activities that the
users perform
▪ The activity diagrams are developed from use-cases
- How a business operates.
- Used to illustrate the movement of objects (data) between activities

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BUSINESS PROCESS IDENTIFICATION WITH USE
CASES AND USE-CASE DIAGRAMS
▪ Elements of Use-Case Diagrams:
- Actors: users or other interacting systems
◦ Is placed outside the subject boundary.
◦ Is labeled with its role.
- Use-case: a major process in the system that gives a benefit to the
users.
◦ Can extend another use case.
◦ Can include another use case.
◦ Is placed inside the system boundary.
◦ Is labeled with a descriptive verb–noun phrase.

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BUSINESS PROCESS IDENTIFICATION WITH USE
CASES AND USE-CASE DIAGRAMS Cont.
▪ Elements of Use-Case Diagrams:
- A subject boundary:
◦ Includes the name of the subject inside or on top.
◦ Represents the scope of the subject, e.g., a system or an individual business
process.
- An association relationship:
◦ Links an actor with the use case(s) with which it interacts.
- An include relationship:
◦ Represents the inclusion of the functionality of one use case within another.
◦ Has an arrow drawn from the base use case to the used use case.

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BUSINESS PROCESS IDENTIFICATION WITH USE
CASES AND USE-CASE DIAGRAMS Cont.
▪ Elements of Use-Case Diagrams:
- An extend relationship:
◦ Represents the extension of the use case to include optional behavior.
◦ Has an arrow drawn from the extension use case to the base use case.
- A generalization relationship:
◦ Represents a specialized use case to a more generalized one.
◦ Has an arrow drawn from the specialized use case to the base use case.

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BUSINESS PROCESS IDENTIFICATION WITH USE
CASES AND USE-CASE DIAGRAMS Cont.
▪ Elements of Use-Case Diagrams:
- An extend relationship:
◦ Represents the extension of the use case to include optional behavior.
◦ Has an arrow drawn from the extension use case to the base use case.
- A generalization relationship:
◦ Represents a specialized use case to a more generalized one.
◦ Has an arrow drawn from the specialized use case to the base use case.

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Identifying Major Use-Cases
▪ Review Requirements Definition.
- Helps the analyst to get a complete overview of the underlying
business process being modeled.
▪ Identify the subject’s boundaries.
- Helps the analyst to identify the scope of the system.
▪ Identify the primary actors and their goals.
- Steps 2 and 3 are intertwined. As actors are identified and their goals
are uncovered, the boundary of the system will change.

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Identifying Major Use-Cases Cont.
▪ Identify the business processes and major use cases.
▪ Review the current set of use cases.
- It may be necessary to split some of them into multiple use cases or
merge some of them into a single use case.
- Based on the current set, a new use case may be identified.

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Creating a Use-Case Diagram
▪ Place & draw the use-cases
- The major use cases previously identified.
- Special use-case associations (include, extend, or generalization) are also
added to the model at this point.
▪ Place & draw the actors.
▪ Draw the subject boundary.
- Separates use cases (i.e., the subject’s functionality) from actors (i.e., the
roles of the external users).
▪ Add the associations

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Library Book Collection Management
System Use-Case Diagram

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BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING WITH
ACTIVITY DIAGRAMS
▪ Business Processes consist of a number of activities.
▪ Activity diagrams depict the sequence of these activities
- Are used to model the behavior in a business process independent of
objects.
- Can be used to model everything from a high-level business workflow
that involves many different use cases, to the details of an individual
use case.
- Can be used to model any type of process

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Elements of an
Activity Diagram

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Activity Diagram for the
Manage Appointments Use
Case

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Activity Diagram for the
Borrow Books
Use Case

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Guidelines for Creating Activity Diagrams
▪ Set the context or scope of the activity being modeled.
▪ Identify the activities, control flows, and object flows that occur
between the activities.
▪ Identify any decisions that must be made.
▪ Identify potential parallelism in the process.
▪ Draw the activity diagram.

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Creating Activity Diagrams
▪ Choose a business process that was previously identified to model.
- Review the requirements definition & use case diagram.
- Review all the documentation created during the requirements-gathering process.
▪ Identify the set of activities necessary to support the business process.
▪ Identify the control flows and nodes necessary to document the logic of the
business process.
▪ Identify the object flows and nodes
▪ Lay out & draw the diagram
- minimize crossing lines

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 Overview
Use-Case Description
Relationship

Flow of Events

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Reference
▪ Systems Analysis & Design with UML, 5th Edition.

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