Good tips for flowcharting

industrial pipes

SlideMagic is a blog I read regularly about good design for presentations. Good presentations often include flowcharts to explain systems, which I found to be applicable to the types of flowcharts us internal control folks put together or review on occasion. I think some tips offered in a recent post are excellent, in particular these two:

  • Eliminate as many overlapping connectors as you can. Try again, again, again, again, and one more time. Overlap spaghetti is a sign that you have not really understood how to explain your architecture.
  • After you eliminated your overlaps, you should be left with a grouping of boxes that is more or less logical. If there is a sequential process, there is a high chance that your boxes line up according to it. If things are related, they are probably located next to each other. In the previous steps, you looked purely for overlapping connectors, now go over your diagram again and think about function.

There are a few more on the full post, including one about adding colour which I like a lot but may not fit into the culture of a staid IA department. But it would work well for a presentation.

I could work with flowcharts every day, all day.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash