Flowchart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart

Flowchart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A flowchart is common type of chart, that represents an algorithm or process,

showing the steps as boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting
these with arrows. Flowcharts are used in analyzing, designing, documenting or
managing a process or program in various fields.[1]

Contents
1 Overview
2 History
3 Flow chart building blocks
3.1 Symbols
3.2 Examples
4 Types of flow charts
5 Software
5.1 Manual
5.2 Automatic
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

A simple flowchart
representing a process for
dealing with a broken lamp.

Overview
Flowcharts are used in designing and documenting complex processes. Like other types of diagram, they help
visualize what is going on and thereby help the viewer to understand a process, and perhaps also find flaws,
bottlenecks, and other less-obvious features within it. There are many different types of flowcharts, and each
type has its own repertoire of boxes and notational conventions. The two most common types of boxes in a
flowchart are:
a processing step, usually called activity, and denoted as a rectangular box
a decision, usually denoted as a diamond.
A flowchart is described as "cross-functional" when the page is divided into different swimlanes describing the
control of different organizational units. A symbol appearing in a particular "lane" is within the control of that
organizational unit. This technique allows the author to locate the responsibility for performing an action or
making a decision correctly, showing the responsibility of each organizational unit for different parts of a single
process.
Flowcharts depict certain aspects of processes and they are usually complemented by other types of diagram.
For instance, Kaoru Ishikawa defined the flowchart as one of the seven basic tools of quality control, next to the

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histogram, Pareto chart, check sheet, control chart, cause-and-effect diagram, and the scatter diagram[2].
Similarly, in UML, a standard concept-modeling notation used in software development, the activity diagram,
which is a type of flowchart, is just one of many different diagram types.
Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams are an alternative notation for process flow.

History
The first structured method for documenting process flow, the "flow process chart", was introduced by Frank
Gilbreth to members of ASME in 1921 as the presentation Process ChartsFirst Steps in Finding the One Best
Way. Gilbreth's tools quickly found their way into industrial engineering curricula. In the early 1930s, an
industrial engineer, Allan H. Mogensen began training business people in the use of some of the tools of
industrial engineering at his Work Simplification Conferences in Lake Placid, New York.
A 1944 graduate of Mogensen's class, Art Spinanger, took the tools back to Procter and Gamble where he
developed their Deliberate Methods Change Program. Another 1944 graduate, Ben S. Graham, Director of
Formcraft Engineering at Standard Register Corporation, adapted the flow process chart to information
processing with his development of the multi-flow process chart to displays multiple documents and their
relationships. In 1947, ASME adopted a symbol set derived from Gilbreth's original work as the ASME Standard
for Process Charts.
According to Herman Goldstine, he developed flowcharts with John von Neumann at Princeton University in
late 1946 and early 1947.[3]
Flowcharts used to be a popular means for describing computer algorithms. They are still used for this purpose;
modern techniques such as UML activity diagrams can be considered to be extensions of the flowchart.
However, their popularity decreased when, in the 1970s, interactive computer terminals and third-generation
programming languages became the common tools of the trade, since algorithms can be expressed much more
concisely and readably as source code in such a language. Often, pseudo-code is used, which uses the common
idioms of such languages without strictly adhering to the details of a particular one.

Flow chart building blocks

Symbols
A typical flowchart from older Computer Science textbooks may have the following kinds of symbols:
Start and end symbols
Represented as lozenges, ovals or rounded rectangles, usually containing the word "Start" or "End", or
another phrase signaling the start or end of a process, such as "submit enquiry" or "receive product".
Arrows
Showing what's called "flow of control" in computer science. An arrow coming from one symbol and
ending at another symbol represents that control passes to the symbol the arrow points to.
Processing steps
Represented as rectangles. Examples: "Add 1 to X"; "replace identified part"; "save changes" or similar.
Input/Output

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Represented as a parallelogram. Examples: Get X from the user; display X.

Conditional or decision
Represented as a diamond (rhombus). These typically contain a Yes/No question or True/False test. This
symbol is unique in that it has two arrows coming out of it, usually from the bottom point and right point,
one corresponding to Yes or True, and one corresponding to No or False. The arrows should always be
labeled. More than two arrows can be used, but this is normally a clear indicator that a complex decision
is being taken, in which case it may need to be broken-down further, or replaced with the "pre-defined
process" symbol.
A number of other symbols that have less universal currency, such as:
A Document represented as a rectangle with a wavy base;
A Manual input represented by parallelogram, with the top irregularly sloping up from left to right. An
example would be to signify data-entry from a form;
A Manual operation represented by a trapezoid with the longest parallel side at the top, to represent an
operation or adjustment to process that can only be made manually.
A Data File represented by a cylinder
Flowcharts may contain other symbols, such as connectors, usually represented as circles, to represent
converging paths in the flow chart. Circles will have more than one arrow coming into them but only one going
out. Some flow charts may just have an arrow point to another arrow instead. These are useful to represent an
iterative process (what in Computer Science is called a loop). A loop may, for example, consist of a connector
where control first enters, processing steps, a conditional with one arrow exiting the loop, and one going back to
the connector. Off-page connectors are often used to signify a connection to a (part of another) process held on
another sheet or screen. It is important to remember to keep these connections logical in order. All processes
should flow from top to bottom and left to right.

Examples
A flowchart for computing factorial N (N!) Where N! = 1 * 2 * 3 *...* N. This
flowchart represents a "loop and a half" a situation discussed in
introductory programming textbooks that requires either a duplication of a
component (to be both inside and outside the loop) or the component to be put
inside a branch in the loop.

Types of flow charts

There are many different types of flowcharts. On the one hand there are
different types for different users, such as analysts, designers, engineers,
managers, or programmers.[4] On the other hand those flowcharts can
represent different types of objects. Sterneckert (2003) divides four more
general types of flowcharts:[4]
Document flowcharts, showing a document flow through system
Data flowcharts, showing data flows in a system
System flowcharts showing controls at a physical or resource level
Program flowchart, showing the controls in a program within a system
However there are several of these classifications. For example Andrew

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A simple flowchart for

computing factorial N (N!)

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Veronis (1978) named three basic types of flowcharts: the system flowchart, the general flowchart, and the
detailed flowchart.[5] That same year Marilyn Bohl (1978) stated "in practice, two kinds of flowcharts are used
in solution planning: system flowcharts and program flowcharts...".[6] More recently Mark A. Fryman (2001)
stated that there are more differences. Decision flowcharts, logic flowcharts, systems flowcharts, product
flowcharts, and process flowcharts are "just a few of the different types of flowcharts that are used in business
and government.[7]

Software
Manual
Any vector-based drawing program can be used to create flowchart diagrams, but these will have no underlying
data model to share data with databases or other programs such as project management systems or spreadsheets.
Some tools offer special support for flowchart drawing, e.g., ConceptDraw, SmartDraw, EDraw Flowchart,
Visio, and OmniGraffle.

Automatic
Many software packages exist that can create flowcharts automatically, either directly from source code, or
from a flowchart description language. For example, Graph::Easy, a Perl package, takes a textual description of
the graph, and uses the description to generate various output formats including HTML, ASCII or SVG.

See also
Activity diagram
Augmented transition network
Business process illustration
Business Process Mapping
Control Flow Diagram
Control flow graph
Data flow diagram
Flow map
Functional flow block diagram
N2 Chart
Petri nets
Process architecture
Pseudocode
Recursive transition network
Sankey diagram
State diagram
Warnier-Orr
Unified Modeling Language (UML)

References
1. ^ SEVOCAB: Software and Systems Engineering Vocabulary (http://pascal.computer.org/sev_display/index.action)
. Term: Flow chart. retrieved 31 July 2008.
2. ^ The seven basic tools of quality, by Matthew Moore, at www.onesixsigma.com (http://www.onesixsigma.com

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/node/7445)
3. ^ Goldstine, Herman (1972). The Computer from Pascal to Von eumann. Princeton University Press.
pp. 266267. ISBN 0-691-08104-2.
4. ^ a b Alan B. Sterneckert (2003)Critical Incident Management. p.126
5. ^ Andrew Veronis (1978) Microprocessors: Design and Applications. Page 111
6. ^ Marilyn Bohl (1978) A Guide for Programmers. Page 65.
7. ^ Mark A. Fryman (2001) Quality and Process Improvement. Page 169.

Further reading
ISO (1985). Information processing -- Documentation symbols and conventions for data, program and
system flowcharts, program network charts and system resources charts. International Organization for
Standardization. ISO 5807:1985. http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc
/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=11955.

External links
Flowcharting Techniques (http://www.fh-jena.de/~kleine/history/software/IBM-FlowchartingTechniquesGC20-8152-1.pdf) An IBM manual from 1969 (5MB PDF format)
Introduction to Programming in C++ flowchart and pseudocode (http://www.allclearonline.com
/applications/DocumentLibraryManager/upload/program_intro.pdf) (PDF)
Advanced Flowchart (http://www.tipskey.com/manufacturing/advanced_flowchart.htm) - Why and how
to create advanced flowchart
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Categories: Algorithms | Quality control tools | Diagrams | Technical communication | Computer programming |
Articles with example code
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