Artifacts > Business Modeling Artifact Set > Business Use-Case Model... > Business Actor > Guidelines
Guidelines:
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Business Actor |
A business actor represents a role played in relation to the business by someone or something in the business environment. |
To fully understand the purpose of a business you must know who the business interacts with; that is, who puts demands on it, or is interested in its output. The different types of "interactors" are represented as business actors.
The term actor means the role someone, or something plays while interacting with the business. The following types of business users are examples of potential business actors:
Hence, an actor normally corresponds to a human user. However, there are situations where, for instance, an information system plays the role of an actor. If your bank’s on-line services are so good that your business can manage most of its bank transactions from a PC on your own premises, your use cases interacting with the "money supplier" actor, the bank, will in fact interact with an information system.
An actor represents a particular type of business user rather than a real physical user. Several physical users of a business can play the same role in relation to it; that is, they act as instances of one and the same actor. Also, the same user can act as several different actors. This means that one and the same person can embody instances of different actors.
A business actor should be given a name that reflects its role towards the business. The name should be applicable to any person—or any information system—playing the role.
The characteristics of a business actor should cover the following topics:
This information is useful to define the business use cases in a way that is meaningful to the business actor. It is only relevant for "human" business actors.
Rational Unified Process |