Flowcharting sessions

by Phil Cohen

Flowcharting is a tool developed in the computer industry, for showing the steps involved in a process. A flowchart is a diagram made up of boxes, diamonds and other shapes, connected by arrows - each shape represents a step in the process, and the arrows show the order in which they occur.

In computing, there are dozens of different symbols used in flowcharting (there are even national and international flowcharting symbol standards). In business process analysis, a couple of symbols are sufficient. A box with text inside indicates a step in the process, while a diamond with text represents a decision point. See the figure for an example.

The use of flowcharts in a flowcharting session is quite different to their use in computing, even though the tool is essentially the same. A flowcharting session is a meeting of the people involved in operating and managing the process. During the session, a flowchart of a process is developed. But the flowchart is not an end in itself - the flowchart produced during a flowcharting session acts mainly as a focus for common understanding between the people involved.

A flowcharting session requires a group of people who are involved in the process (between 2 and 6, as a rough guide), a facilitator (ie someone to lead the discussion and draw the flowchart), and a whiteboard. The facilitator starts by asking where the process begins, and draws out the discussion until the end point of the process is reached, drawing the flowchart on the whiteboard. Another useful way of drawing flowcharts is to use large yellow sticky notes, write a step on each one, and stick them onto butcher's paper. In this way, they can be moved around after they are written. Flowcharts are usually very fluid during a flowcharting session, and so a flexible and informal drawing tool (such as a whiteboard) is necessary.

At the start of the session, it will be necessary to set some rules. Are we flowcharting the process as it is documented (ie as set out in our procedures manual) or as it actually is? And are we flowcharting the process as it is, or as it should be? It is quite feasible to use a flowcharting session to develop a completely new process from scratch.

If the flowchart is too messy to draw, try starting again, but leaving out all of the decision points and concentrating on the simplest possible course. Then the session can go back and add the decision points later. It may also be useful to start by drawing a high-level flowchart for the whole organisation, with each box being a complete process that has to be filled out later.

Allow more time for the flowcharting session than seems reasonable. Allocate half a day (without interruptions) and see how many processes you can get through in that time. Seemingly quite simple processes generate a lot of debate during a flowcharting session, because it is only during the session that everyone involved in the process realises they have a different idea of what the process looks like! And this is the value of a flowcharting session - to reach a common understanding of a process.

From this common understanding can come a number of things - process improvement ideas will often arise spontaneously during a flowcharting session. And after the session, the facilitator can also draw up a written procedure - a flowcharting session is a good way of documenting a process.

Process improvement starts with an understanding of the process, and flowcharting is the first step towards process understanding.

For more detail on the technique of team flowcharting, see our book Writing Effective Performance Support Documents.

-> Click here for further details on team flowcharting <-

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This is one of a series of articles written by Phil Cohen and Onno van Ewyk, HCi . Most of the articles were also published in the Australian Financial Review. This article may be reproduced only with the permission of HCi Consulting (email HCi ). Copyright HCi, 1993-1998.