3.4 Resources

• Resource = Anyone or anything involved in the performance of a process activity.
  • Can be:
    • Process participant : Individual person such as an employee.
    • Software system: Server or software application.
    • Equipment: Printer or manufacturing plant.
  • Distinguishing between:
    • Active resources (participant): Resources that can autonomously perform an activity.
    • Passive resources (equipment): Resources that are merely involved in the performance of an activity.

• Resource Classes = A group of resources (people) that are interchangeable in the sense that any member of the group can perform a given activity.

• Pools = Used to model resource classes.
  • Used to model an whole organization.
  • Each different business can be represented by a pool.
  • Sequence flows cannot cross the boundary of a pool.

• Lane = An partition of an pool, which stands for an sub-class or single resource.
  • Used to model an department, unit, team, software system or equipment within that organization.
  • Lanes can be nested inside each other in multiple levels.
  • Important to place an activity/event within the right lane and pool.
  • Placing of a data object is not important, they depend on the activities they are linked to.
  • Gateways need to be placed in the same lane as the preceding decision activity.

• Message flow = Represents the flow between two separate pools (resource classes)
  • Displayed as: Dotted line starting with an empty circle and ending with an empty arrowhead. Also has the label indicating the content of the message.

• Collaboration diagram = A diagram with two or more pools.
• White box pool = It shows all the activities, events, gateways and data objects.
• Black box pool = It hides how the process is performed.
  • An organization may decide to not expose internal behavior because of competition.
• Send Activity = An activity that is the source of a message
• Receive Activity = An activity that receives a message. And starts when this message is available.