As I have covered in previous posts, flowcharts can be a great tool for improving productivity. However, in order to ensure that your flowcharts are effectively communicating information, they should follow visual grammar rules like the consistency rule and the one-page rule I covered in the last post.
At SmartDraw, we aim to help businesses document complex business processes that do not easy lend themselves to being easily understood. The one-page rule is particularly important to keep in mind because of how complex and involved business processes can be. Even on a large, poster-sized piece of paper, a single chart for a complex process is difficult to follow. Just take this flowchart for example:
Even though you can not see all the details of this flowchart, how easy do you think it would be to view and fully comprehend this visual on one piece of paper?
Process documentation is far more effective as a collection of hyperlinked flowcharts. Each step in a top-level process flowchart should be a summary of the detailed steps in the complete process. Each should be hyperlinked to a flowchart that shows the details of the step. The steps in the detail flowchart can also be summaries of even more detailed steps and hyperlinked to their own flowcharts in a recursive manner.
Here is an example of a flowchart that shows the top-level process for serving burgers in a fast food restaurant:
Each of these shapes is a summary of a more detailed process and is hyperlinked to a flowchart for that process. For example, clicking on the first shape "Order taken at restaurant counter" links to this flowchart:
Each flowchart fits on one page and is easily understood. Even more, each flowchart is formatted consistently as to not detract from the information in each visual.
In addition to following the one-page rule and consistency rule, when you create flowcharts, you should consider the following flowchart rules:
Do you follow these rules when you create flowcharts? What do you do in order to ensure your flowcharts are visually consistent?
