Process Documentation - Activity Diagrams

[Stan James]

Activity diagrams with swimlanes look like a useful view of team processes. On paper I drew activities spanning lanes or the same activity in two lanes to indicate all the participants rather than the owner. When I fired up Rose and looked at some UML references and it appears that an activity sits in one lane to indicate responsibility or ownership for the activity. Anybody know of a notation to indicate the participants? RUP uses a little diagram with actors, activity and input/output artifacts but it's a separate diagram.

Thanks!

[Scott Ambler]

You should use Actors to indicate the participants.

Not sure that Rose can handle that though, but it's official UML.

- Scott

[Stan James]

Neat. A little cloud of actor symbols around each activity? Seems perfectly intuitive if a little busy. I like the way RUP docs show individual activities with actors, inputs and outputs, but I wanted to get the swim-lane thing going to help show the whole life cycle as seen by each role.

[Scott Ambler]

Doh! I didn't understand the question. I'm not so sure that's official UML, but it makes sense.

My advice is always to do what makes the most sense for your situation. Don't worry about the UML police, they don't have any authority anyway.

- Scott