Business Use Case diagram with no initiate actors

Question

I need to model a few business processes in an orchard. These business processes should be enchanced with a system I need to build. In my case these are:

• Store process
• Sales process
• Harvest process

Firstly, I needed to create a Business Use Case diagram. And I have created something like this:

Let me explain this. When we need to harvest, we contact with work agency to get some workers, we give them a job etc... When we want to sale or store our harvests we need to call transport company to transport our stuff to warehouse or wholesale to sell it.

Ofc, this is so much simplified then it is in real life.

My problem is: becouse system I'm bulding will be used inside a company/orchard there is no external actor in this diagram that USE an usecase. There is noone who can USE use cases. Is it correct? Next step is to create a sequence diagram, and it looks like the Orchard needs to initiate the flow.

Or maybe I should exculde some actors like: Manager. He will initiate flow. But where i can put him in my Business Use Case diagram then?

Can someone give me some advices how this should look like?

Answer 1

An use case and an actor have a 1:1 relation (despite what you might read about secondary actors). The use case describes the added value which its actor receives. If you identify both the actor and the added value you can describe the use case. Else you can't. If you have an actor that does not play a role then it is not an actor. Also forget about "internal" and "external" actors. An actor is always external. The use case sits at the boundary of the system under consideration. And the actor outside.

In case of your manager you should think about the added value. Starting a process sounds simple but it takes a bit to actually do it (or why is his salary so high?). So most likely there is a use case. Often it's just hard to find.

Answer 2

You say you need to create a business use case diagram. Why do you need to? Are you using a particular method, like Rational Unified Process, which you have to follow?

Personally, I think a business use case diagram is not a very good technique for specifying business processes. They can't be used for internal processes, exactly as you point out. Instead, I would use activity diagrams. A business process is a UML 'activity'. This gives a good starting point to further decompose each business process using activity diagrams that model the process flows. I have explained my objections against business use case diagrams in more detail in my paper "Which UML models should we make? . See the paragraph titled "More business analysis".

Answer 3

To capture a high-level view of the Business, sometimes we are talking to non technical individuals to gather the business story via interviews to try to ascertain the functional requirements of the business. The context and system DFD can be a good way to bounce your understanding of the business with the client/ maybe handy when meeting again with the business/customer.

These tasks, may well lead to further discussions about what you can do for the business; ie to improve a system they use as part of their business GOAL. For example an improve an accounting program by expanding the functions.