Business Process and Flowchart Modeling

Choose a business process from where you work, or choose a hypothetical business process to develop a business process activity model. You will use the standard UML model to construct the Activity Diagram for the chosen business scenario. All activities must be labeled and their relationships clearly identified.  

You should include the following in your Business Process Activity Diagram:

· Make sure that all processes are included in the model

· Ensure that the relationships between the activities are accurate

· Make sure that the process is logical and can be easily followed

· Make sure that the content aligns with the Reading & Study material presented in the course

Exercise Description

For this exercise, you will use the BPMN to build a model of a business process and put the model in a “swim-lane” layout.

Experience has taught me that reserving one of the lanes for “Outside the Process” is always very helpful. Why? Because when you are modeling a process for a customer and looking to process improvements, it is a great help for them to understand what is under their control and what is not. They have no control of whatever is “Outside the Process” (also called out of scope).

Modeling Packages: You can use any drawing tool or modeling software, but the tool of choice these days seems to be Microsoft Visio. However, I have used Paint, PowerPoint, and Word in the past. It’s a little harder because you need to create all the symbols but it works.

BPMN Symbols: These are the same as in your text, but I will repeat them here. The following are the symbols you will need to include in your diagram for this exercise:

Symbol	Meaning
	Start the process at this point. Sometimes referred to as the start state.
	The process ends here. Sometimes referred to as the end state.

	The Activity. Always stated as a “verb thing.” It is an activity so it must be doing something. Like Update, Check, Evaluate, Test, Print…..
??	Decision point. Always stated as a question to be answered yes or no.
	Process Flow
	Message Flow

The Business Process: You can use the business process provided in the following section, but it may be more interesting if you model an actual business process in the company you currently work in. If you choose to model a process in your workplace, you must provide the instructor a narrative of the process you are modeling. The requirements are that your model must be understandable, and have a complete logical flow from start to end.

EXAMPLE:

Assignment Process—Supermarket Sales: The following is the process case study for this exercise:

A customer enters the supermarket. The customer takes either a shopping cart or basket and strolls through the supermarket. The customer selects items from the shelves and puts them in the shopping cart or the basket. When finished, the customer brings the items to the cash register.

The customer deposits groceries on the checkout counter. The cashier scans each item and deposits the item on the bagging counter. When the last item is scanned, the cashier reads the total amount from the system and announces it to the customer.

If the customer pays by credit card, the cashier swipes the card through the cash register to charge the amount. The customer then signs the printout. If the customer pays by cash, the cashier returns the change, if any. The cashier then gives a receipt to the customer.

The bagger asks the customer if they want paper or plastic bags. The bagger then bags the items. If the customer is pleased with the bagger services, he/she will tip the bagger. The customer picks up the bags and leaves the supermarket.

Swim-lanes Format: If you are using the provided process, the following is a sample of the “Swim-Lane” format.

Outside Processes	Customer	Cashier	Bagger