Is581

MILESTONE 5 – PROCESS MODELING

 Synopsis

Process modeling is a technique for organizing and documenting the structure and flow of data through a system’s processes and/or the logic, policies, and procedures to be implemented by a system’s processes. In this milestone we focus on using and constructing data flow diagrams (DFDs) and decomposition diagrams to perform process modeling.

Data flow diagrams are tools that depict the flow of data through a system and the work or processing performed by that system. A decomposition diagram is a DFD planning tool that shows the top-down functional decomposition and structure of a system.

During this milestone you will first construct a context diagram to establish project scope and boundaries. Secondly, you will draw a functional decomposition diagram to partition the system into logical subsystems and/or functions. Thirdly, you will complete a partially completed event list that identifies and confirms the business events to which the system must respond. Once that task is completed, you will refine the decomposition diagram drawn earlier to include event-handling processes. Finally you will construct a system data flow diagram that shows the big picture of the system, and a primitive data flow diagram for a single event process.

 Objectives

After completing this milestone, you should be able to

 Construct a context diagram to illustrate a system’s interfaces with its environment.

 Identify external and temporal business events for a system.

 Logically group events to create a functional decomposition diagram.

 Create event diagrams.

 Merge event diagrams into a system data flow diagram.

 Draw appropriate primitive data flow diagrams.

 Prerequisites

1. Process modeling — Chapter 8.

2. Milestone 3 or 4 solution.

 Assignment

As a systems analyst or knowledgeable end-user, you must learn how to draw decomposition and data flow diagrams to model business process requirements. The preliminary...