Building Process Hierarchies

A process hierarchy comprises a set of processes and the decomposition links that connect them.

At each level of decomposition, processes can represent different types of functions. In the following example, the Marketing process is a department, the Corporate Web Site is a project, and the Analyze needs process is an activity:

If you are working with the Data Flow Diagram process language, you can analyze each process at the first level of your hierarchy in its own context diagram to show the primary relationships between the organization and the external entities with which it deals (see Data Flow Diagram (DFD)).

• Building Hierarchies with the Process Tool
  You build a process hierarchy using the Process tool. The following table summarizes the different types of processes that you can create with this tool:
• Expanding and Collapsing Process Hierarchies
  You can expand and collapse all or part of your hierarchy by right-clicking the + and — signs at the bottom of your process symbols.
• Arranging, Moving, and Reusing Processes in a Hierarchy
  When building your PHD, you may find that you need to arrange or move your symbols, or that you want to reuse a process in more than one place in the hierarchy.
• Creating Default Flows Between Processes in a Business Process Diagram
  For each process that has sub-processes, PowerDesigner can create a default control flow linking all of its sub-processes in a business process diagram.