Activity: Detail a Business Entity

Determine Areas of Responsibility

Collect all business use-case realizations in which the business entity participates. Make sure you have access to descriptions of business workers that access the business entity, and other business entities with some relation to it. The responsibility description for the business entity should include the entity's role in the business, and its lifecycle from creation to deletion. You can document the lifecycle with a state diagram (see Guidelines: State Diagrams in the Business Object Model).

Define Operations

On the basis of what the business entity does in each business use-case realization it participates in, decide what operations the business entity should have. These operations provide tools for the business workers to access the business entity. Briefly describe each operation.

Finalize the responsibility description and explain how all operations are related, including the business entity’s lifecycle.

See also Guidelines: Business Entity, the discussion on operations.

Define Attributes

Identify and briefly describe the attributes of the business entity.

See also Guidelines: Business Entity, the discussion on attributes.

Evaluate Your Results

Review and discuss the business entity with other members of the team and appropriate stakeholders, so that they have a clear understanding of the business entity and agree on its description.

See also Guidelines: Business Entity, and checkpoints for business entities in Activity: Review Business Object Model.