Context diagram

UNDERSTANDING
THE PURPOSE OF
THE CONTEXT
DIAGRAM
 Before changes
can be made, you
should
understand how
the organization
fits into the big
picture
Context Diagrams

✓Provides a visual view

✓Are high-level
✓Serve as a checklist
✓Are “at a glance”
 Assignments,
Contractor
Payments
Purchase Orders,
Customer
Payments
Invoices

Products, Orders, Payments

Organization
Invoices
Deposits Materials,
Bank Invoices Supplier

Withdrawals,
Statements
Shipments,
Payments

Shipping
Company Invoices
Uses

• Understand relationships
• Understand functions
• Explain scope
CONTEXT
DIAGRAM
FEATURES
Context
• How a business area, system, process, organizational area being
analyzed, interacts with the world

Actor
• A person, department, or system that is directly involved with
the business area being analyzed

External entity
• A person, department, organization, or system that
interacts with the business area but is not being analyzed. They
can be the source or destination of data outside of the system.
Context Diagram Leverage

• Entities
• Relationships
• Processes
Entities
•The actors that are represented in the diagram
 A circle indicates what you have control of.
A box represents what you have influence over.
An arrow shows relationships.
 Elements of a Context Diagram

• The process, represented as a rounded rectangle, which shows a given process or

activity at its highest level. Initially, the whole system can be considered a process.

• The external entity may be an actor (person or thing) that either triggers the
process or receives output from the process. An external entity may also be either
a data source and/or destination. External entities are represented as rectangular
boxes

• Data flows, represented as arrows, are the connectors between the main process
and the various external entities and show data flow among them.
1
3
 The Context Diagram shows
the system under
consideration as a single high-
A Context Diagram provides
level process and then shows
no information about the
the relationship that the
timing, sequencing, or
system has with other
synchronization of processes
external entities (systems,
such as which processes occur
organizational groups,
in sequence or in parallel.
external data stores, etc.). It is
Therefore it should not be
a diagram that defines the
confused with a flowchart or
boundary between the
process flow which can show
system, or part of a system,
these things.
and its environment, showing
the entities that interact with
it.

What is a Context Diagram?

 Benefits of Context Diagram

- Shows the scope and boundaries of a system at a glance

including the other systems that interface with it

- No technical knowledge is assumed or required to understand

the diagram

- Easy to draw and amend due to its limited notation

- Easy to expand by adding more granular levels

- Can benefit a wide audience including stakeholders, business

analyst, data analysts, developers

- “The objective of a system context diagram is to focus attention

on external factors and events that should be considered in
developing a complete set of system requirements and
constraints.”
 Questions to Ask – Human Actors

• Who are the people that will use the system?

• What experience do they have with the solution?

• Are we dealing with different levels of people (for

instance, regular customers, preferred
customers, elite customers)?

• Do any of these individuals have disabilities?

 Questions to Ask – System Interfaces

• What systems are we interfacing or communicating with?

• Where are we getting our data?

• Who are we sending information to?

• What data do we send/receive?

• What event triggers data exchange?

– flow-oriented - related to a data flow (i.e., customer credit
data enters the system so the credit report is updated)
– temporal - it occurs at a predictable point in time (i.e., all the
offline taken data is processed daily at 5:00 P.M.)
– Control event - an expected event that happens at a particular
point in time, but the time is not planned or known ahead of
time (i.e., deliveries arrive from overseas)
 System Interfacing Methods - I

• Data from one system is printed and rekeyed into

another system
– This method has inherent risks of errors and fraud and is labour-
intensive and costly.
• Data from one system is manually
uploaded/downloaded from one system to another
– This method reduces the risk of typing errors, reduces the risk of
fraud, but if data is not uploaded/downloaded in a regular and timely
manner there may be risks of inaccuracy in the backend systems.
• Data from one system is uploaded/downloaded in
automated batch processing
– This method reduces errors and fraud, however there are still risks of
data inaccuracy in the backend systems between the batch
uploads/downloads. The duration between batch processing may be
specified from minutes, to overnight, to weekly. The greater the
frequency of batch processing the lower the risk of data inaccuracy,
but there will also be an increase in network traffic and CPU usage.
 System Interfacing Methods - II

• Data from one system is interfaced with

another system via database integration
– In this situation a shared database may be used or the
two databases exchange data. This interface method is
very fast, that counts for large amount of exchanged
data. The main drawback is that it bypasses the
business logic from the upper layers.
• Data from one system is interfaced with another
system via web services
– In this situation a system exposes web services that are
called by the other system. The integration can be
synchronous or asynchronous and can be performed
directly or through a middleware. This method is slow
for large amount of exchanged data. It is the most used
method for single item of data. It passes all the business
logic validation from both systems.
Questions to Ask – Hardware Interfaces

• When we capture data, where does it go? Do we need to

print something?

• How will we display that information? Who needs to see it?

• Where will the information in our application come from?

Example
 Exercise

Create the context diagram for an online flight booking application.