Simplify an activity diagram

1
votes

I'm working on my graduation project which is an online quiz website. now i'm drawing the UML activity diagram but it gets too complex and i can't add more details because at the end it must be printed in the project documentation in A4 papers.
can i split the diagram into multiple diagrams?. and if i did this should i repeat the login/registration actions in the beginning of each diagram?
enter image description here

3
umlactivity-diagramsystem-analysis
As a side note: you use forks which makes create/update/delete parallel actions. That's probably not what you intend. Also the guards need to be surrounded by [ and ]. – qwerty_so
shoud i make it as a decision (option) or there is a better way? – Ashraf Eldawody
A decision is your choice ;-) Probably the user would like a loop instead of being logged out directly. And deciding to cancel the login would as well be nice. – qwerty_so

3 Answers

3
votes

Use structured activities to form logical groups. You can instantiate these activities as call behavior actions where needed.

Assume you have an activity Login

enter image description here

(the lying 8 is an invention of Enterprise Architect to indicate an embedded diagram; not UML standard)

which looks inside like

enter image description here

(just very simplified).

Now you can instantiate that like

enter image description here

where the fork indicates the action is a call behavior.

Adding activity parameters it would even be possible to parametrize these. Just like you would do when calling a function in a programming language.

0
votes

This diagram must be split. Because a lot of details will be lost. If you want to describe top-level diagram, it's better to use the Use cases.

But it seems you want to show here the interfaces journey map, right? If that so, there are 8 activity diagrams or much more interface description picturies.

For the interfaces diagrams you can use UML activity diagram or BPMN for middle-level diagrams. They will help you to make the GAP analysis for your solution and answer most of questions to other people.

Or you can use the user interface description picturies for detailed specification. I recommend you to use them.

My diagrams isn't classical UML activity diagrams, that's why you have to ask your curator if could you use them.

When I'm describing interfaces I usualy describe every page/popup window in its own paragraph:

  1. (text) Preconditions
  2. (picture) User interface picture with
  3. (text) UI elements description
  4. (text) Common system behavior

I can easily refer between the paragraph using enumeration.

Interface journey diagram interface journey diagram

User interface description user interface description

0
votes

The solution can be look like:

enter image description here