Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Naming our activities
The activity name is usually composed of the following:
• A verb
• A noun
Some examples of activity names are "Review Architectural Document", "Clean the Cut-
ting Machine", "Analyze Client Risk", and so on.
It might seem a simple thing to put a name to an activity, but there are a few considera-
tions to take beforehand. Remember that when you write a process, you are doing it from
a particular perspective—whether it is a high level view of the whole company activity in-
side a process, or the flow of a very specific step performed by a company. Therefore, the
activity name must make sense from that perspective. It wouldn't make much sense to
name an activity "Rotate robotic arm elbow 45 degrees" in a high-level process, because
its point of view should be much more abstract and wide.
Also, you should avoid any technical developer jargon in your activities' names. Remem-
ber that the process is thought to be a place for common language within a business or
business unit, so the jargon used (if any) to write the process should be the jargon of that
particular domain. It should be clearly understood by business users. In other words, try to
avoid names such as the following:
• Call
InternalWebService->getMyData()
• Execute batch command W-3302
• REST call to
http://my.domain:8080/rest/esoteric-service
Also, try to avoid any terms that will make the process hard to read, like obfuscated IDs or
out-of-scope terminology. Remember that depending on the process perspective, the
people who will be interested in reading or updating such processes will be accustomed to
different terminologies.
