Activity Definition

Dragon1 Icon for Activity

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Dragon1 Definition for Activity:
An activity is the behavior or action, of a particular kind, done as work or for pleasure, alone or in a group by humans, animals, robots, or systems. This term is considered to be most important in the context of an organization, company, business or enterprise.

The Dragon1 open EA Method defines an activity as the behavior, tasks, or actions of a particular kind of work or pleasure, alone or in a group, by humans, animals, things, robots, computers, or systems.

An activity can be decomposed into tasks or can be seen as a major task. Activity as a term is considered to be most important in the context of an organization, company, business, or enterprise.

The shape for 'activity' is a label-shaped rounded rectangle.

The source of this activity definition is Paauwe, Dragon1, 2014. A digital copy of the Dragon1 EA Glossary can be found on the Enterprise Architecture Glossary.

Examples of activities are: making coffee, camping, and printing a sculpture. Activities normally are part of functions and are part of processes. A function groups activities, focusing on realizing the same goals. Processes structure the order in which activities take place or are executed to realize certain business goals.

Every day in every organization a lot of business activities take place. To manage and structure the business activities, we often make use of the elements 'business function' and 'business process'.

A business activity is any activity that is engaged for the primary purpose of realizing business goals, such as making a profit.

Sales business activities, for instance, are part of the business function 'Sales Management' in an organization. The business process of 'Closing a Deal' contains a few sales business activities, but may also contain business activities from the Business Function 'Legal Management'.

On the Dragon1 Platform, you can model activities, functions, and processes. We also have extended the ArchiMate modeling language with 'Activity'. ArchiMate used to have 'Activity' as an element, but it was dropped when it was handed over to the Open Group. Dragon1 considers an activity to be the most important element of an organization. We use a circle as a shape for the ArchiMate activity.

Example of Activity

Here you see an example usage of Activity.

You see two business functions 'Sales Management' and 'Legal Management', one business process 'Closing the Deal', and three business activities. The business functions group activities and the business process structures the order or flow of activities.

Do the Demo BPMN Process diagram.

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On Dragon1 templates are available to be more productive in creating models of activities and processes.

If you have comments or remarks about this Dragon1 term or definition, please mail to specs@dragon1.com.