Effective Software Project Management

Business Process Diagramming

How do you diagrammatically represent a business process? You can use the standard flowchart symbols to keep it simple and couched in symbols you are already familiar with. Figure K-3 lists the more commonly used symbols, and the following bulleted list explains them.

• Operation— This box denotes that a change has taken place. The input is somehow changed as a result of having gone through this process.

• Movement— This symbol denotes the movement of output from one process step to become the input to the next process step.

• Decision— This is a decision step. A question needs to be answered. The two flows that emanate from a decision box are either Yes/True or No/ False.

• Inspection— Someone other than the person producing the output must inspect it for quality, conformance, or some other tangible characteristic. Often an approval is included as a successful inspection.

• Document— This denotes a paper document.

• Delay— This symbol denotes a wait state in a process. Usually associated with something joining a queue and waiting for the next process step to occur.

• Storage— Indicates that an item has been placed in storage and must wait for a release before moving to the next process step. These usually represent wasted time that must be removed from a process.

• Annotation— Provides added detail about some process, which is needed for clarification. It might also include the position title of the person responsible for the process.

• Direction of Flow— Denotes the order ...