BMIS510 Exercise 2 – UML Activity Diagram
MODELING EXERCISE 2 INSTRUCTIONS
Overview
For this modeling exercise, you will re-visit the scenario given in the Modeling Exercise 1 Instructions document and consider the following, additional information.
Materials Required
To complete this deliverable, you will need the following materials
• This document
• Microsoft Word
• LucidChart.com, http://draw.io, StarUML (http://staruml.io), PlantUML (http://plantuml.com), or Microsoft Visio
Scenario
From the owner’s point of view the AS-IS process is effective, though not efficient. However, the owner also understands that, through technology, the process could be improved. The owner is looking for you to provide that vision. The owner’s initial vision is of a more automated point of sale (POS) system.
After much work with the clients you have successfully convinced them that a simple POS system would merely speed up a poorly designed process. This only results in producing poor results faster. You have convinced him that what his business really needs is an Enterprise solution. A solution that rolls all the distinct business activities into single automated solution that will be named, Mom & Pop Pizza Information Enterprise System (M&P-PIES). M&P-PIES is a fully automated system linking all functions into a single, robust enterprise system.
TO-BE Business Process:
Before the new system can be developed, however, the business process underlying the system must be revised. After your discussion with the client, you have determined the following pain-points in the AS-IS business process:
1. Weekly scheduling of employee hours consumes far too much management time. They would like a more automated way to notify employees and receive confirmation that their assigned hours are acceptable.
2. Weekly ordering of supplies and stock inventory is also time consuming. They would like a more automated way to have weekly orders generated by the system, based on current inventory and forecasted orders for the week.
3. Payroll processing is also very time consuming. They would prefer to have a system where employee hours are automatically recorded, along with the calcuation of overtime, and amount of withheld taxes. They further want to require that employees use direct deposit, rather than print and sign checks.
4. When processing an order, there have been times, when the carbon-copy or the original copy of the order ticket is lost, which has created a distasteful experience for customers. They would like to see a process that isn’t dependent on paper dinner tickets. In other words, wait staff would need to enter customer orders directly into the system.
5. Recipes have not always been managed very well. They are currently kept in a recipe box with only one copy of each recipe. This can cause a bottleneck when multiple cooks are trying to prepare the same meal for different customers. The revised process should enable access to recipes by any number of cooks.
6. There are also times when recipes need to be updated, created, or even deleted by management staff. The process should include a monthly review of recipes by management in consultation with the cooks to ensure that the menu is reviewed and kept up to date.
In addition to resolving the above pain-points, the owners recognize that a new system could enable them to add new services to their business process with very little added effort. They would like to see their current process modified to incorporate the following requirements:
1. They would like to enable customers to call ahead and make a reservation. In addition, they would like all customers who walk in the door to share their first name and indicate whether or not they had a reservation. If a reservation was made, and if the table is available, the host shows the customer to their table as before. If no reservation was made and no table is available, customers are given an estimated wait time and asked to wait in the waiting area.
2. At the end of the meal, once a customer pays his/her bill, a notification is sent to the Dish Washer/Bus staff to clear the table immediately when they leave.
You might start to think Mom & Pop’s isn’t so mom and pop anymore and you would be correct. This system will be foundational to developing Mom & Pop Pizza franchises across the country.
Instructions
As you learned in the previous modeling exercise, Activity diagrams allow you to transform your written notes about the current business process into a visual tool that can be used to discuss improvements with a client. Activity diagrams can also be used to model changes in the business process for further communication with the client. This diagram of the desired business process is often called the TO-BE Activity Diagram. For this second exercise, develop the TO-BE Activity diagram that incorporates the changes indicated in the TO-BE Business Process section above. As you complete this exercise, keep the following in mind:
• Refer to the Modeling Exercise grading rubric before you begin this exercise.
• You are once again diagramming the “business” process, so this diagram should also be technology agnostic. In other words, the actions and/or activities you include in your diagram should avoid any reference to specific technologies, like point of sale systems, calculators, or even pencil and paper. The one exception to this is that the M&P PIES system is now a new stakeholder, and so it can represent a swim lane in your diagram.
• The purpose of this diagram is to visually communicate with the client the way their current process functions. As such, your diagram should be easy to read for a non-technical person, follow correct UML syntax for activity diagrams (see the UML textbook), and include a proper title and legend (you will need to draw the legend manually, using the unique shapes used in the diagram along with a short textual description of what each shape represents).
• Be sure to use swimlanes in your diagram to identify which stakeholder(s) are responsible for each action you include in the diagram.
• There are no, set-in-stone solutions for this exercise. Just as in the real world, there are no off-the-shelf solutions for every IT challenge. It is not our intention to limit your creative knowledge designs.
• The instructor may make suggestions or add additional requirements in the weekly announcements for each modeling exercise, so be sure to heed those suggestions as you prepare your models, or you may lose points.
Submit this assignment by 11:59 p.m. on Friday of Module/Week 4.