What Is PDD And SDD

Today, we will talk about the two important documents in RPA, PDD and SDD. What is PDD and SDD ? what the difference between PDD and SDD? What is the importance of both of them?

As per RPA Development life cycle, Automation of the above process will start with creation of PDD and SDD documents as part of Planning , Analyzing and Designing phase.

First Document - PDD

A PDD stands for Process Definition Document and it contains information on the As-is process flow diagram. It is like a user manual and it is provided by the end-user or the business analyst. This document shows the high level flow of the manual process (like sequence of steps performed as part of the business process, the conditions and rules of the process). It is usually used as a platform (a base for developers) from which the automated solution will be designed. It comes under the Planning and Analyzing phase of the  RPA Development life cycle.

This document is highly classified confidential because of its contents. It contains:

• Document History - Name Of Author, Approver and Document Version
• Process key contact - Process Owner, Process Reviewer and Process SME.
• AS IS process - Like Process map , Process Steps , Process Required Applications 
• TO BE Process - Expected Design of the Business Process
• In/Out Scope for RPA
• Business/Application Exceptions
• Reporting

Second Document - SDD

A SDD stands for Solution Design Document and it contains a high-level design report that describes how you may implement a technical solution to your project. It is created for every business process that is automated using RPA technology. This document is filled in by the RPA Solution Architect and RPA Developer who automates the business process and reviewed by the RPA Solution Architect before handover to RPA Operations. It comes under the designing phase  of the  RPA Development life cycle. It contains:

• Scope of Automation - In/Out Scope for RPA and Human Interactions.
• High-level Design - Automation Flow Diagram and Infra Architecture Diagram
• Information Security - Required compliance observation 
• Prerequisite to run Automation - Like Resource, Hardware , software , licences etc
• Exception Handling - Business and Application
• Debugging Tips - Tips to check Issues
• Success Criteria - Factor that impacts the success of automation

Next Article:

I hope this post will give some clarity about the PDD and SDD documents. If you have any questions, feel free to comment it below.

In my next article, I will explain how to create a PDD for the process. happy learning :)