Flowcharts

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You may need no more than this brief and witty introduction.

Flowcharts in their simplest form are diagrams where boxes represent actions, diamond shapes represent decisions, and lines connect the boxes and diamonds to show the flow of processing. The diamonds have one entry point and two exits, with condition labels on the exit points.

They also use connector and labeling symbols.

Computer flowcharts use additional symbols to show, for example, storage access, screen display, procedures, sub-routines and printing. Other diagrams used in software engineering have been adopted since the 1990s (such as The Unified Modeling Language – UML) and flowcharts are less used now.

Flowcharts may be used at many levels from a detailed description of a self-contained computer algorithm to a description of an overall system flow.

They are easy to use and remain suitable for some tasks where procedures and processes are to be described.

Swim-lane diagrams[edit]

Swimlanes.jpg

Also known as Cross-functional diagrams, these are flow charts where location, business function or business unit responsible for carrying out parts of a process are also shown.

Control flow diagrams[edit]

Control flow diagrams were developed in the 1950s, and are widely used in multiple engineering disciplines. They are one of the classic business process modeling methodologies, along with flow charts, data flow diagrams, functional flow block diagram, Gantt charts, PERT diagrams, and IDEF (Wikipedia).

Process flow diagrams[edit]

A process flow diagram (PFD) is a diagram commonly used in chemical and process engineering to indicate the general flow of plant processes and equipment Wikipedia and are outside the scope of WikIT.

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