This article will contain several parts: 1. What is a flowchart? What are the differences between flowcharts and other charts (such as line charts, concept charts, structural charts, and use case charts? 2. Why do I need a flowchart? 3. What is the classification of flowcharts? 4. How to draw a flowchart? 5. The flowchart drawing tool will be divided into series in the text based on the length. Stay tuned and have a lot of discussions.
Part 1: What is a flowchart?
1. DefinitionTo understand one thing, I am used to starting with its definition. Because we hate ten years of education, and we hate to recite various theorems and definitions, I found that many people in my life and work hate to define and reference a single thing. So you will find that many people have to quarrel with each other and listen carefully. It turns out that the chicken and duck are talking, and they are not on a channel at all. There is no common language for the description of one thing, and there is no so-called term. It is easy to define. You can refer to a definition and find that there is a problem with the definition. OK, add the definition and expand it to more people.
Of course, nothing is too late. Let's remind each other.What is a flowchart? It is a good way to understand the definition. Flowchart = process + diagram, for example, Figure 2: Flowchart Definition
Process:Flow refers to a series of operation processes with specific logic relationships for a specific subject to meet specific needs. The process naturally exists. However, it can be non-standard, non-fixed, and full of problems. Therefore, no process appears to be available. Not long ago, each team joined a business team to investigate the process and gave feedback to me about the missing process. When asking, the person in charge gave me a reply: they have no process for this business. In fact, in a strict sense, the business has been carried out, and there is no process, but it is not clear whether there is no fixed process or the target of your research.
Figure:Chart or digoal is to make the process that has been basically fixed to a certain degree of regularity explicit and intrusive, which is conducive to the dissemination and precipitation, process restructuring reference. As can be seen from the definition, as long as there are things and tasks, there will be a process, but not all processes are suitable for expressing in the form of flowcharts, the process suitable for displaying with flowcharts is fixed to a certain extent and regular, and the key links in the process will not change.
2. Comparison between flowcharts and other chartsWe also use or hear many other types of charts at work, such as wireframes, Information Architecture diagram, or site map ),, use Case or E-R diagrams that developers often call. What are the differences between the different charts? For a simple comparison, Figure 3: Flowchart vs other commonly used charts, if you want to link them to a project, you can understand it:
Use case diagram ):
What is the activity that a role needs to complete in the system? For example, during the interaction between the user role and the ATM, the activities that the user needs to complete include saving money, taking money, and querying. The deposit activity can be further subdivided into card insertion, password input, amount input, ATM banknote, user receipt, card return and other activities. The use case diagram can map out the functional points that the system should satisfy without considering the order of user actions. Instead, it only extracts some key dynamic object phrases. The product manager and Development Engineer are the common examples. The flowchart indicates the sequence of each user activity. For example, you must insert a bank card before entering the password, and the flowchart must directly show various exception judgments. For example, when the password is incorrect, what prompts and actions are prompted when a password is incorrectly entered more than once. The person who uses common flowcharts is the product manager, designer, or anyone who needs to describe how the business works.
Information Architecture diagram, site map ):
It is manifested in a system like this: what are the functional and content display layers? For example, how to design the navigation page on the welcome page after a user enters the system, and whether there are withdrawals, deposits, and queries directly, or is there any other navigation? The common information architecture diagram is the designer. However, the commonly used organizational architecture diagram is HR.
Wireframe ):
Express the content layout and weight of each interface, and mark the interaction details. For example, how to prompt the next action when the password is incorrect. The person who uses the commonly used line diagram is the designer.
Entity Relationship Diagram (E-R diagram ):
It is the work of the database architecture, indicating the relationship between the real time in a business system or scenario. For example, the relationship between the depositor and the bank card is one-to-many, and is associated through the card opening event. Generally, a rectangle is used to represent an object. An ellipse identifies the attributes of the object. For example, the attributes of a depositor object include the surname, name, mobile phone number, and address. The bank card has the following attributes: account opening bank, account name, and bank card number.
All of the above charts have experts in different fields. I will not be able to work here. So what are the elements of the different definitions in the flowchart? I have summarized the six elements of the flowchart. I hope you can remember that these six elements can be reviewed in future articles. You can also judge whether the flowchart you see is professional. Figure 4: six elements of the flowchart
- Participant: who is in this process? It can be a system, a printer, or a role-generally a person with a certain type of work. For example, the customer service team has both A and B, but if their work is the same, you only need to write a customer service role in the flowchart.
- Activity: what has been done, such as ordering and checkout.
- Order: What is the order in which these events occur? which task is the precondition for other tasks? For example, if the customer does not check out the account, the promotion card will not be generated.
- Input: the start of each activity depends on the input or data. For example, when a cook starts cooking, you need to get a menu.
- Output: after each activity, what documents or data will be input to the next party? For example, how can the person in charge of food delivery know that food has been prepared?
- Standardization: Use a set of standardized symbols to deliver your flowchart, so that the audience can understand it more quickly.
The standardization of flowcharts is not mandatory. In fact, we have seen many types of flowcharts, as long as the tasks and order can be passed clearly, are actually categorized into flowcharts. Figure below: The image is from the network. If there is any infringement, please email us. However, if you have a large audience of flowcharts in a company environment, adopting standardized symbols will bring a lot of communication benefits. In short, you know.
Part 2: What is the classification of flowcharts?Common flowcharts include the business flow and page flow ). At work, as UED, you may find that PD often talks about business processes. As an interaction designer, we produce more page flowcharts. What is the relationship between the page flowchart and the Business flowchart? Who are there first and who are there? First, let's tell a story: if your dream is to open a national chain restaurant in the medium and high grades, you should not first think about how to select a site, but why should you open a chain restaurant, as well as your positioning and core competitiveness. Is it fast food or ordering, chain stores or joining? In the community or prosperous business area? Is it Sichuan or Jiangsu or Zhejiang seafood? Is it intended for middle-aged and elderly people or young people? Is it a family or an animation? Who are the competitors? What kind of investment is required? What are possible risks? All of these questions are answered. The so-called strategic layer should be clear. Then let's assume that you have analyzed it now and decided with the major investors in a direction: fashion, animation, and tea restaurants for young people, a chain store. But first in Hangzhou, you can choose a site for dating young people, the area where street scanning is located, such as scenic spots, famous business districts, and cinemas ............ Wait, what about next? The next step is to find a way to make these implementations? So what needs to be done? Site selection? Investment? Decoration? Select the catering menu? Hire an employee? How does one perform each step? What is the time point? And so on, you need to go to the tactical layer. Do you always need to ask people to execute these tasks? First, the core team is responsible for deploying various construction tasks. When a restaurant is opened, a stable operation team, such as service, sanitation, kitchen, procurement, and personnel, needs to be organized, there is still a division of labor in the kitchen, white cases, hot dishes, cold dishes, etc? Do each department need to set management and reporting relationships? So your organizational structure is born. How can we smoothly cooperate with each role to complete daily stable tasks and sudden tasks? For example, when a customer comes to the door, who will guide the guests to their seats and who will order food? How can we quickly transfer the food information to the kitchen and distribute it to the wine room, Cold Dish Room, and hot dish room? And ensure that the guests can eat the dishes as soon as possible? You must consider the collaboration process of various personnel and optimize the efficiency, so the business process has emerged. After a period of human operation without using any ordering system, you can also find it. When you order food, the waiter writes down the requirements of the guests in hand. Because there is toilet paper, the waiter can send the copy to the kitchen and write down the table number. The kitchen is relatively small. Employees who are responsible for assigning tasks can view the menus and write down what they need to handle on the blackboard of the cold dish area, and write down the dishes to be processed on the blackboard of the hot dish area, and report the product name to the liquor room. However, as the business grows, there are many problems with the above methods of human flesh. First of all, the efficiency of manual copy is too low, customers frequently change food, the response is too late, and the hand copy fails, leading to frequent errors. The kitchen was so messy that I had to hire a few more people to run the hall. Once customers want to add food, it will be more troublesome to remove the food. They need to find the food they ordered at that time, and then manually annotate and modify it. At the same time, they need to modify the various blackboards at the backend of the kitchen ...... Therefore, if you want to develop an intelligent system to replace a lot of manual work, you have invited the system development team. After evaluation, they have determined that the system can be used to solve the problem from ordering food to food delivery. The handheld terminal can quickly deliver customers' ordering requirements to the printer. The printing system can automatically print the order according to the type of customers' ordering. Therefore, you can see your own hot menu in the hot dish room, you can view your own cold dish menu in the cold dish room, while the wine room can see the hotel menu. After the food is prepared, the food delivery personnel can deliver the food according to the name and printed documents and check the food according to the customer's order receipt. The system must also be equipped with a settlement system that transfers the final menus and consumption prices to the settlement front-end, allowing the cashier to perform operations quickly. This system will eventually need to be presented. How can we design the interface of the handheld terminal? Can a waiter order a single dish with less clicks? How to Design the settlement center interface? Through the above story, do you better understand the relationship from strategy, tactics, business flow chart to page flow chart? Summary:
- First, there is a business requirement and business goal, that is, what is our vision? (Strategy)
- Then we were born with what kinds of tasks we needed to break down and how to execute tactics? (Tactics)
- Then, what departments need to be built, and jobs should be divided and cooperated? (Organizational structure)
- Then the Business Process for different departments to collaborate to complete a task is created? (Business Process)
- After the business process is stable, optimization efficiency is often taken into account, so a system will be born to support the process, reduce human efforts, and promote data collection (system vision)
- In order to design this system, PD needs to consider what functions can replace human efforts in a certain stage (functional requirements, system processes)
- No matter what the functions are, they will be displayed on the interface. designers will pay attention to the task flow and behavior path in the system, so that users can complete the task more efficiently and happily. (Page flow) (how to draw a page flow chart ?)
Of course, in addition to business flows, system flows, Page Flows, and data flows. In our daily work, we often hear people talk about the concept of swimming paths, task flowcharts, and so on. What is the relationship between God and horse? Figure 5: Flowchart classification This article focuses on the "Business flowchart" in the above process and will share how to draw a lane chart-that is, the most used by the PD, the most reference by the technology, the most visible flowchart of UED. In the fourth section, I gave a more detailed description of the diagram of the swimming track chart, as well as the method and principle of drawing it. However, I would like to explain it in the next article. In our work, we often see two business flowcharts. From the perspective of the form of presentation, it is a very well-differentiated, commonly known as a "swimming track Chart", and it looks like a swimming track, there can be horizontal or vertical lanes. A track chart is called an activity-based flow chart in some documents, and is a one-by-one activity. Another type is a flow chart of departments and positions. The circle in the chart represents a department or position. A rectangle represents activity. This flowchart focuses on the logic of how things are done, but it is weak in reflecting the responsibilities of various departments. It is difficult for a person in a certain position to see the responsibilities and tasks of his or her department at a glance like a swimming track chart. So it is rarely used now. The picture comes from the network. If there is any infringement, please email us and go back to the swimming track diagram. The swimming track diagram has several key points: two major dimensions, activity flow, and process elements. We will explain this in detail later.
Part 3: Why is a business flow chart required?The flowchart provides a simple "thumbnail overlooking a chart" to help the audience quickly understand how the business works. It contains several keywords: who, when, under what conditions, what is done, what is input, what is output, and who is output ...... Different from system processes, business processes focus more on how the business itself operates. They tell business stories and include business rules. The system process is to meet the business process and realize the informationization and systemization of some or all processes.
Therefore, business processes are preconditions for all links --Software Requirement analysis and information system construction will also sort out business processes first. The following shows how the business flow chart plays a role in three main scenarios:
1. Employee Training
Figure 6: TrainingIn this scenario: the flowchart provides a view to quickly understand how the business operates. Through the business flowchart, new employees can quickly understand the final goal of the business, which roles are involved, their responsibilities, and connections between them. In addition to training new employees, employees also need to refer to the business flow chart to understand how new work content is carried out and where they are located and who are on the upstream, who is downstream and what is the work to be delivered.
2: Process Optimization and restructuring
Figure 7: Flowchart Application Scenario 2: Process OptimizationThe existence of Business Process Reengineering can be clearly refuted: existence is reasonable. In fact, the existing business processes are not reasonable. It may be that the multiple involved roles are used to some practice, and the change may not affect the end operations, there may also be a lack of insights into operational business process problems and a strong push for changes-because it is not a matter for a certain department to push business process changes, it requires the cooperation of various departments in the process. Most of the time, the business process optimization is top-down, but the bosses may not be so knowledgeable about the actual business process, the Business Flow Chart can be very good to express this "operational model ". By looking at the business flow chart and finding access from key nodes, we can directly access: Why? Why not? In this way, we can explore deeper problems, instead of asking: What do you do now? Through surveys, analysis of business flow charts, and introduction of more roles, we can analyze the current business flow problems: Missing, repetitive, risky, and efficient. To develop corresponding optimization solutions.
3: Basic InformationFigure 8:
Application scenario 3 of the flowchart:As mentioned above, the information system is a task of emancipating the hands and feet of employees and replacing repetitive human labor. After the system is on, it does not mean that the business process does not need to be changed, but some adjustments have been made. One of the participants has become a system, handheld device, or printer. So when designing system functions and system processes, do we have to first understand how the current business works? In this way, we can better analyze and analyze, and better illustrate the process in which the system replaces what kind of human flesh work? Therefore, the PRD we see often begins with a business flow chart and describes the benefits of a system construction, you can also use the previous business flow to compare with the business flow after the system. According to the analysis, the functional points behind the new business flow chart in the vision are clearly written.
Part 4: how to draw a business flow chart?First, is there a process to draw the business flow chart itself? Yes. In software engineering, I heard that everything is an object. In the process, everything goes through the process. Is there no way to eat? As far as eating is concerned, there is a process: Take chopsticks, take food, choose the menu, choose chew, and swallow. A lot of people will soon ask a question in this part: Heidi. Could you introduce the flowchart tool? I am a tool school. I never deny that people are willing to do their best. A good tool itself is a good teacher. In addition to skills, it can also teach us some theories and ideas. These ideas are also an important part of the tool. The second is the specific tool application skills. Therefore, I do not recommend that you directly jump to the tool application. For beginners, pen and paper are always the best entry-level tools, because you don't have to compete with any unfamiliar software. Are there any processes that can be followed to draw a business flow chart? I suggest you start with the following four steps.
1. Research
How to quickly understand the truth about business operations? Are there any research skills available?
2. Organization and presentation
Can I quickly convert the text and questions I have obtained into a business flow chart?
What is the standard diagram of the business flow chart? How can we evaluate the good or bad performance of a business flow chart?
3. Review and confirmation-- Can the business flow chart reflect the actual business?
4. archive maintenance-- How can I quickly respond to the business flow chart as the process changes constantly?
These will be
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Business Flow Chart Drawing Process sharing (2)
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Detailed description.
Part 5: drawing tools?If you do not engage in tool seminars, this part is relatively simple.
Windows:Offline tools are commonly used in the following three scenarios: Small Flowcharts are enough to use PPT, and images or. Interaction designers often use axure to draw line diagrams, so they do not have to learn new tools for the flowchart. They can use the axure Flow Control to create simple business flowcharts. The PD is commonly used by Microsoft's Visio. In addition, we recommend a software: smartdraw. My most recent flowchart is drawn using smartdraw. You can download a free version to try it out. This tool is not just designed for the flow chart, almost all-encompassing: line diagram, flow chart, E-R diagram, UML, Wayne diagram, even Gantt diagram, brain diagram ...... There are not many people who recommend it because it is too large, especially the templates in it. Experience:
Mac:Naturally, I would like to recommend omnigraffle. I don't know why any charts I have drawn will always look pretty ...... Of course, this software can go to www.macx.cn to download the free version ......
However, no matter windows or Mac, there are more options in addition to offline tools:However, it seems that we are not at ease with online tools. It is about servers, network speeds, and gFW.
1. https://cacoo.com/This is the best tool on the interface. I used it to draw a concept map (concept map ). For example, it is drawn using the above tools.
2.
Http://creately.com/
Sky recommendation:
Online flowchart:Processon
Microsoft Visio 2010 click to download
Transferred from Heidi
