Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Approach

Owned by Adeptia Connect (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 28, 2016 by Saurabh Gupta (Unlicensed)Version comment
2 min read

Adeptia Suite can be used in the following two ways to automate a business process flow:

  •  Top-Down approach
  • Bottom-Up approach


To understand these two approaches, assume the following scenario:


Scenario

A manager needs to process a purchase order based on the purchase value. If the purchase amount is less than $50,000, then the purchase order is sent to the VP for approval. However, if the purchase amount is greater than $50,000 then the purchase order is sent to the Director for approval.
To automate this scenario, process flow can be created using either Top-down approach or Bottom-Up approach.

Top-Down Approach

A business user, who is not technically proficient, can use the Top-Down approach. Business users may not know how to create different activities or the parameters that need to be entered in the activities. In this case, they can draw a blueprint of the process flow in Process Designer. Process Designer has different BPMN objects that can be used to draw the blueprint of the process flow. Now rest of the task can be assigned to developer or technical person, who is responsible to implement this process flow. The technical person will create each activities required for this process flow and attach it the blueprint of process flow.
The activities required to create the process flow are:

  • File Source: to specify the text file containing the purchase order as the source. It is stored in the local drive. It picks up the file and passes it to the other activity.
  • Context Target: for transferring the data of the text file into the context of the process flow.
  • Context Source: For fetching the data from the context of the process flow and sending it to the decision node.
  • Decision Node: to decide whether the purchase order is to be sent to the VP or the Director.
  • Repeater: to send the stream from the Context Source to the File Target activity and the Decision node.
  • File Target: to save a copy of the purchase order at the specified location.
  • Mail Target: to send purchase order either to the VP or the Director, based on the purchase value amount.

Bottom-Up Approach

If it is the sole responsibility of a technical people to create a process flow, they do not need to first draw the blue print of the process flow and then create the activities. They can directly create the listed activities, and use them to create a process flow.