Document Management Process

UML Activity Diagram Example

An example of UML activity diagram describing a Document Management Process. Some kind of formal and properly communicated document management process is usually required in any major corporation especially under a regulatory compliance.

A document goes through different state or stages - it is created, reviewed, updated, approved, and at some point archived. Different roles participating in this process are Author, Reviewer, Approver, and Owner. These roles are represented on the diagram by partitions rendered as horizontal "swimlanes".

An example of Document Management Process activity.

This activity diagram shows responsibilities of different roles and flow or sequence of document changes. Alternative type of diagram - state machine diagram - could also be used in this case to show how document changes its state over time.

Note, that the Document object is not the only object node shown on this activity diagram. There is also another object - Change Request, an object which is used to pass changes to the document requested by Reviewer. State diagram for the Document will only show the document states and transitions, so activity diagram is useful when different roles and several object nodes are involved.