Panta rhei

Πάντα ῥεῖ

—Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος [1]

Flowcharts are magic. They reveal cause and effect relationships much better than words can.

There are many ways to chart the flows of a complex process, such as the described in our earlier post. As good as the plain text is describing the world around us, pictures are much better suited in certain situations, not to mention that using text requires a considerable literary skill, and we confess: we aren't the bards. We aren't a painterly lot, either, if anyone wonders, but we shall try and save a thousand words.

Having agreed on the mode of presenting, we need to choose our tools. Here are some choices:

• Basic flow chart
• Cross Functional Flowchart
• Work Flow Diagram
• Unified Modeling Language - UML
• Integration DEFinition - IDEF
• Business Process Model and Notation - BPMN
• Fault Tree Analysis Diagram
• ITIL Diagram
• Microsoft SharePoint Workflow
• SDL Diagram
• Six Sigma Diagram
• TQM Diagram
• Value Stream Map

Let's ponder this list for a while. In the next post, we shall make our choice.