When To Use a Fishbone Diagram

Fishbone diagrams work for most entrepreneurs and almost any industry or person having a problem. Professional diagramming software may help you create Fishbone (Cause and Effect or Ishikawa) diagrams. When people are unclear about what is causing an issue, ConceptDraw DIAGRAM will be your lifesaver. When to use a Fishbone diagram? Originally developed as a quality control tool, you may find a Fishbone diagram helpful when used in many cases, such as to analyze a complex problem when there are many causes, for identifying all possible root causes for an effect or a problem, when you need different point of view to look on a problem, to uncover bottlenecks and identify where and why a process doesn't work, for acceleration a process when traditional ways of problem solving consume many time.

Fishbone Diagram

The use of specific types of visual diagrams is effective way to problems solving and decisions making. Fishbone diagram is a graphical tool used for visual and systematical analyzing the relationships between the solved problem and causes affecting its occurrence. It has hierarchical structure and that's why is well-suited for capturing in a mind map for a process of reviewing what branch is a real root cause of a given issue. ConceptDraw Office products and PM solutions offered by ConceptDraw STORE give the powerful help in questions of planning and project management. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM and ConceptDraw MINDMAP applications perfectly suit for designing professional-looking Fishbone Diagrams and allow effectively identify the root causes of quality issues using the Fishbone diagrams. The PM Response solution from the Project Management area of ConceptDraw Solution Park is powerful for improvement the response time to project changes, helps with iteration planning, with solving project challenges and discussing project layout approaches.

Think and act effectively

Many people who use mind mapping software for personal organizing find ConceptDraw MINDMAP sufficiently useful mind mapping tool in their business and daily life. Especially many positive responses receive ConceptDraw MINDMAP as cross platform tool to mind maps for Macintosh and Windows.

Improving Problem Solving and Focus with Fishbone Diagrams

When you need to focus on the problem, professional diagramming tool helps you create a Fishbone diagram also known as Ishikawa diagram. Understanding of the problem via Fishbone diagram will improve the processes between departments and teams. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM extended with Fishbone Diagrams solution gives a powerful tool for improving problem solving and focus with Fishbone diagrams.

SWOT Analysis Software

SWOT analysis is a powerful tool that helps the business professionals to identify the positives and negatives within an organization and in an external environment. TOWS is a variation of SWOT analysis, more focused on external factors and action planning. The correct and full awareness of the situation is important for strategic planning, as well as for decision making and coordination the company's resources and information capabilities of the competitive environment. SWOT and TOWS Matrix Diagrams solution included to ConceptDraw Solution Park makes the ConceptDraw DIAGRAM a powerful SWOT Analysis software and provides a lot of advantages. First of all note the set of ready-made templates that help to identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats the most quickly and effectively, and the choice of outputs to present the analysis results as SWOT or TOWS matrix. The well-designed SWOT matrix samples and examples included to SWOT and TOWS Matrix Diagrams solution illustrate the results you can achieve using it and also can be used as a good start for your own matrices.

Quality Control

Using mind mapping for quality management is a creative approach that allows one to structure all key quality points on the one page.

Affinity Diagram

The Affinity Diagram, also known as a KJ diagram, is a business tool invented for organization the large quantity of ideas and data. It is a part of Seven Management and Planning Tools, it is usually used right after brainstorming to sort large numbers of ideas into the corresponding groups. The Affinity Diagram helps to represent in a better way the structure of large and complex factors which influence on a problem, divides these factors into the smaller and simpler structures, and helps team members to see the patterns and identify possible solutions to problems they have. The diagrams of this type don't show the causal relationships between the factors, but they are designed to prepare the data for holding further analysis of the cause-effect relationships. Another area of Affinity Diagram usage is contextual inquiry as a way to sort observations and notes from field interviews, support call logs, open-ended survey responses organizing, etc. ConceptDraw MINDMAP software offers you the tools for easy holding brainstorming, generation ideas and creation MINDMAP Affinity Diagram.

What is a Quality Management

Successful quality management implemented in a company of any size is a critical component of a company organization.

Relations Diagram

The Relations Diagram is used to identify how the factors influence each other, to determine what factors are causes and what are effects. The factors mostly influencing are called “drivers”, the primarily affected factors are “indicators”. The problem solving is focused on the change of "drivers" factors by applying the corrective actions. The "indicators" factors help establish the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor the changes and also define the effectiveness of the corrective actions in resolving a problem. ConceptDraw MINDMAP software ideally suits for designing Relations Diagrams. The easiest way to create the MINDMAP Relations Diagram, is to use the included Relations Diagram input template. Open it in ConceptDraw MINDMAP application from the Input tab and hold a new brainstorming session, identify the central issue and the contributing factors to this issue. Click the Finish Brainstorm button to generate a Mind Map and begin the further work with it, or select Relations Diagram item from the Output tab to automatically draw it in ConceptDraw DIAGRAM application.