Business Process Flow Diagram Formats
There are three common formats used to render business process flow diagrams. The first (Figure K-4) is the top-down and left-to-right format. It is commonly used in program and system flow charts. The second is the “swim-lane” format (Figure K-5). It identifies the actors who participate in the business process. The third is the linear format (Figure K-6). It can be used to save space but requires that the process being modeled is a linear process—that is, it has no branch on condition situations.
Figure K-4. The top-down left-to-right format
Figure K-5. The swim-lane format
Figure K-4 is the format software developers will be most familiar with. It harkens back to the early days of programming and is the standard they adopted several decades ago. It follows the logical thought patterns of the software developer and is therefore their popular choice.
Figure K-5 is the format I prefer when diagramming business processes. For one, it is a customer-facing format. By that I mean it is intuitive to the customer and represents their processes in a way that they can easily understand.
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