28.4. Guidelines
A few guidelines have emerged in activity modeling; these include:
- This technique proves most valuable for very complex processes, usually involving many parties. Use-case text suffices for simple processes.
- If modeling a business process, take advantage of the "rake" notation and sub-activity diagrams. On the first overview "level 0" diagram, keep all the actions at a very high level of abstraction, so that the diagram is short and sweet. Expand the details in sub-diagrams at the "level 1" level, and perhaps even more at the "level 2" level, and so forth.
- Related to the above, strive to make the level of abstraction of action nodes roughly equal within a diagram. As a poor counter-example, suppose in a "level 0" diagram there is an action node labeled "Deliver Order." And, a second action node "Calculate Tax." Those are very different levels of abstraction.