CODEWITHSUNDEEP
uml
PeanutsMonkey
PeanutsMonkey

Reputation: 7105

Is there a way to represent real people in UML?

Generally in UML, you model roles as opposed to people however if there is a use case to model people (along with their names, contact details, etc), is there a known way of depicting this?

For example do I create a superclass called "Person" and generalize the roles followed by a specialization of a real person?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 79

Answers (1)

flup
flup

Reputation: 27103

I took a look at some of your other questions and now I realise I completely misunderstood and you're probably trying to model an organization and the people in it.

ArchiMate is a semantic layer on top of UML that is intended for architecture modelling. Real people get described in the business layer, as actors.

A business actor is defined as an organizational entity capable of (actively) performing behavior.

A business actor performs the behavior assigned to (one or more) business roles. Examples of business actors are humans, departments, and business units. A business actor may be assigned to one or more business roles. The name of a business actor should preferably be a noun.

Now generally the person fills a spot in the organization that in a couple years could be filled by another person. The structure / architecture of the organization would not change and as such the actor can be described by the name of their position, say, "Head of department" rather than by their name and phone number.

Still, I understand that it may be handy to have this sort of information available when you want to contact them.

UML-model-wise, I'd think that the actor Head of Department is a class, realizing a business role that's also a class, and that Joe with phonenumber 12345 is an object of that class.

But practically, I'd think this is too much detail for the level at which you're describing the organization. I'd suggest you stick a UML note on those few actors of key contacts whose names you think are worth mentioning in the diagram. But administrate the rest of them in a system that's more fit for this, like your company's ADS or Contacts in Microsoft Outlook.

Upvotes: 1

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