Flowcharting Software

Creating a flowchart that is known to be a type of diagram that represents some algorithm, some process or some workflow may be a challenge for those who never had any experience in doing it before. Having such useful tool as the ConceptDraw DIAGRAM diagramming and drawing software it is possible, but once there is an opportunity to use a relatively new Flowcharts solution from the ConceptDraw STORE application, then it would worth to take it.

By showing the steps of any process, workflow or an algorithm in a way of the boxes of many different kinds that are connected with each other with arrows, it is possible to make any needed flowchart. The mentioned diagrammatic representation is very commonly used in designing, documenting, managing and analyzing any processes or programs in various fields of business activity for illustrating some solution model to a given problem.

Also used in designing and documenting some simple processes or programs, flowcharts are known to be one of the types of diagrams that help visualize what is going on. With the help of flowcharts is it becomes much simpler to understand any process, finding the flaws, the bottlenecks as well as other less-obvious features within it. There are a lot of different types of flowcharts, each type of which has its own repertoire of boxes as well as the notational conventions.

Example 1. Flowcharting Software in ConceptDraw STORE

The most commonly used types of boxes that are used within the flowcharts is a decision, that is known to be usually denoted in a way of a diamond, and a processing step (called as an “activity”) that is being denoted as a rectangular box.

Any flowchart can be described as "cross-functional" in case the page is divided into different swim-lanes. Describing the control of different organizational units, the swim-lanes are often the essential part of any flowchart. Any symbol that appears in a particular "lane" is known to be within the control of this particular organizational unit. The described technique allows the author to locate any needed responsibility for making a decision or performing an action correctly, showing the responsibility of each of the organizational units for different parts of some single process.

Flowcharts are used for depicting some certain aspects of processes being usually complemented by other types of diagram. The flowcharts were also defined as one of the seven basic tools of quality control and in UML (a standard concept-modeling notation that is used in any software development) the activity diagram (known to be a type of a flowchart) is known to be one of many different diagram types.

Being an alternative notation for process flow, both Drakon-charts and Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams are also widely used but still flowcharts have more popularity nowadays. The other common alternative names include flow chart, process flowchart, process map, process chart, functional flowchart, functional process chart, business process model, process flow diagram, work flow diagram, process model, business flow diagram and other. Such terms as "flow chart" and "flowchart" are used interchangeably being identical.

The underlying graph structure of any flowchart is a flow graph. Such flow graph abstracts away all the node types, their contents as well as other ancillary information.

Flowcharts could be also suggested to be modelled from the perspective of the different user groups, such as system analysts, managers, clerks, etc. Also, it was stated that there are only four general types of the flowcharts. Those four types include the document flowcharts, the data flowcharts, the system flowcharts and the program flowcharts.

Example 2. Flowcharting Software

Document flowcharts are usually used for showing the controls over some document-flow through some system. Data ones are widely used for showing the controls over some data-flow in a system, system ones are showing controls at some resource or physical level and program ones are showing the controls in some program within a system.

Although there are several of these classifications such as Andrew Veronis named being three basic types of flowcharts (the general flowchart, the detailed flowchart and the system flowchart), the very same year Marilyn Bohl stated that in practice there are two kinds of flowcharts that are used in the solution planning: system ones and program ones. More recently Mark A. Fryman stated that there are even more differences, defining the decision flowcharts, the logic flowcharts, the systems flowcharts, the process flowcharts and the product flowcharts being just a few of the different types of flowcharts that are commonly used in both government and business.

There are many diagram techniques that exist nowadays being similar to flowcharts but carrying some other name, such as the UML activity diagrams. Any drawing program can be used for creating such flowchart diagrams, but the best one seems to be the ConceptDraw DIAGRAM one as it helps make the needed drawings within a very short period of time, such as only a couple of minutes.

Example 3. Basic Flowchart Template

Offering the special support for flowchart drawing, the Flowcharts Solution was developed by the specialists of CS Odessa making it simpler to create the needed flowchart with the aid of the pre-made templates as well as the design symbols that can always be used within any flowchart drawing.

Thus, flowcharting may be a fun process in case the right tools are being used while creating it such as the ConceptDraw DIAGRAM and the ConceptDraw STORE applications.