When does an information system get its own lane in BPMN?

Question

I understand that in BPMN, each actor within a pool gets a distinct lane. My general guideline of whether or not a non-human information system gets its own lane is if the system carries out any automated tasks that are displayed in the BPMN diagram--if it autonomously carries out a task, then it gets its own dedicated lane.

In particular, if the only time the information system appears is a data object (that is, a database) that supplies messages or data associations to tasks by human actors, but without the system having any of its own tasks, then I do not represent the database in its own lane; I rather place it in the lane of the most logical human actor.

Is this usage correct, or are there better or more accurate rules for when information systems get their own BPMN lane?

Answer 1

I agree with your usage, I generally use lanes for human actors to show responsabilities over a set of tasks. I do not model much lanes for systems: most of the time an automated tasks is under the (business) responsability of an actor of the process.