Why I Like Flowcharts

Flow charts are simple and everybody understands them. You can draw a reasonable flowchart with just five shapes.

• Start/Stop or Begin/End

• Activity

• Process (pre-defined)

• Decision

• Arrows

For very large and complicated diagrams, I occasionally use swimlanes page connectors - to cover multiple pages.

There are other flowchart shapes in common usage as well. I prefer not to use these unless it is absolutely necessary.

Flowcharts have their limitations. It only shows what from the 5 Ws (who, what, where, why, and when). To make it more descriptiveve, I just have a call out box with an explanatory note. This is usually sufficient to give the reader all the information required.

Swimlanes can be used if you wish to make it more formal and add who performs the activity or makes the decision.

Again, this is intuitive and easy to understand. Do take time on the text within the shapes. I prefer to use short sentences that can be read and understood quickly.

I have only one rule: all decision boxes should result in a yes or no. Taking care on the text within a shape has a twofold benefit:

1. It forces the author to think about what they are writing
2. It makes it easier to comprehend

The aim is simplicity.

The breezetree site has some additional rules to follow when drawing flowcharts - these are also quite useful.

Further reading:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart
• http://www.breezetree.com/article_generalflowcharting1.htm