Quality-Based Process Modeling

Requirements & Conformance Flows

 This curriculum defines quality as conformance to requirements. For our projects to be able to create a quality business system, we must describe it in terms of conformance to requirements. We must always keep quality in mind if we’re going to produce a quality system. As soon as we start working on a Context Data Flow Diagram we should already be talking about quality -- requirements and conformance.

There are two types of purposes for data flow vectors in the Context Data Flow Diagram:

  • REQUIREMENTS FLOWS

    A requirements flow conveys a triggering event that causes the target process to act. It always flows from the customer to the supplier. The process is a quality process if it ultimately conforms to the requirements in the data flow vector.

  • CONFORMANCE FLOWS

    A conformance flow conveys the results of the process that was triggered by a requirements flow. It always flows from the supplier to the customer. The data in the flow is said to conform to the requirements.