State diagram
State diagrams describe the different statuses that an object moves through or provide an abstract description of the behaviour of a system. They can be used to cross reference business rules to ensure consistency and identify gaps, detect gaps in use cases and process flows, and find requirements on how states of an object change.
The elements of a state diagram include:
- State (wait state, ongoing state, finite state)
- Transition (what causes movement to the next state)
- Activities (process that occurs when an object is in a certain state)
- Composite states (contains more than one sub-state)
- Concurrent states (can be in more than one state at the same time)
A sample state diagram (click for alternate version):
