How to draw a business flow chart?

Six key problems in the expression of business flow chart

"Cooking Trilogy" of Business Process Diagram

Before drawing a business flow chart, it should not be important to think about how exquisite, how to interact and what tools to use.

The real point is to collect the key elements of the business process diagram. Please try to answer the following questions clearly, or don't start drawing a flowchart:

What is the starting point of the whole process? What is the end of the whole process?

What are the roles involved in the whole process?

What does the whole process need to do? (But this is a meeting, it can be a task.)

Are these meetings and tasks optional or mandatory?

What documents are made separately?

It's a bit like brainstorming, which can help you get the raw materials you need. With these "rice" and "water", you don't have to worry about cooking.

In terms of project management, last month, we also tried to standardize the design and development process of a data product.

This is a data product project, and none of us are very experienced. So we gathered all the related roles and organized a mixed application of brainstorming and card sorting.

Let everyone brainstorm the necessary nodes in the project, such as demand investigation, demand analysis, kick-off meeting, PRD writing and confirmation, data evaluation, technical architecture, DEMO drawing, index algorithm definition and so on.

In the process of brainstorming, the host wrote all these nodes on the whiteboard. After no new nodes were born, everyone merged and classified together. And after that?

Write these remaining truly valuable nodes on post-it notes and start sorting them out. In the process of sorting, one person can take the lead, and he will put each node in the lane arranged by role according to his own understanding and design the order. In the process of his progress, others kept asking: "What conditions do you need before this task begins?" "Is this task necessary?" Then adjust the order together. Until the end, no one had any big objections.

Then take pictures as a souvenir.

Then it can be organized into electronic documents, such as project or excel version (using excel for project management? )?

However, the business flow chart is different from the process in the above project:

Various active nodes in the project have wider configurability. Whether task A and task B are parallel or serial, more adjustments and attempts can be made when the members of the project team reach a * * * understanding. So we can brainstorm a tentative and reasonable process through brainstorming. There are two ways to sort out the business flow chart:

One is based on the actual business process. This is obviously not the result of your team being able to YY. More need to go to the real environment, to investigate, to sort out, to confirm.

The other is a scheme based on process optimization. When you know how the current process actually works, based on analysis and discussion, you can judge the unreasonable parts in the process and give a new process that is more perfect or more efficient and lower in cost-maybe you need to add a department, or you need to delete a link, or replace some intermediate steps with a newly developed system.

In short, many times, to make the second flowchart, we must sort out the first one first. So the first truly reflected flow chart is inevitable. In this case, it is unrealistic to base on YY or brainstorming. We need to go to the front line to understand how business works in reality. And in many cases, the more details, the better.

Then how to do it? Based on limited knowledge and experience, I can give the following suggestions:

Survey -2 Organize the presentation -3. Review and confirm the trilogy, as shown:

?

2. Research-ask the right questions, ask more questions and ask more people.

In addition to the questions at the beginning of this part, the research process also solved the questions of who, what, why, how and where: who did what, under what circumstances, what preconditions did this thing need, what was exported, and where was this thing completed? If we understand these problems, our research can be successfully completed.

The performance of the flowchart should answer these questions:

Who? who? Department, role, position

What is this?

Where?-where was it made? On the business flow chart I combed, there is more of a document or various systems to express the degree of informatization. For example, when we find that a registration is made by excel instead of the business system, then where here can be expressed as: excel document.

Document-What is the name of this generated document? Also wrote, on behalf of the file transfer, and if information transfer is to be carried out in the future, this human flesh file also needs to be eliminated and replaced by the system. (On the contrary, if this job is operated in a certain system, where can it be written as "personnel system" and the document can continue to exist, that is, the name of the form in this system: "employee registration form")

Conditions.-conditions. Under this condition, the next activity can continue, that is, the input and output of an activity are represented by logical link lines, and the arrow pointing to an activity indicates the pre-input condition of this activity.

Decision making. Some activities will produce a conditional judgment, and different branching processes will be taken according to different judgment results. For example, when entering employee information, you can choose different processes according to whether the employee has been employed before. For those who are already employed, you can choose the previous job number without generating a new job number.

Give an example (please forgive me if it is not appropriate). Suppose you are ordered to investigate the business processes of two restaurants in order to provide them with the most cost-effective ordering system.

In the survey:

1. You can ask someone who is proficient in business processes to explain the system to you first.

2. Investigate the specific operator and verify whether the explanation he gave you is comprehensive and biased.

3. On-site observation and recording (spend some time browsing business processes)

These three methods are combined with each other. The first method allows you to establish a systematic point of view and understand the general branches, but it is difficult to cut into the details that may go wrong. The second method relies too much on the quality of the question and the scene of the question. Many incorrect conclusions are actually due to asking the wrong person or asking the wrong question. Then you need to use the third method to verify it in observation.

For example, you have found a chef now:

What cuisine are you mainly responsible for?

Hot dishes.

Who gave you the menu?

Our waiter.

How did she provide it to you?

After taking care of the guests' orders, she handwritten a list and showed it to me in the window.

What will be on the list?

Table number, dish name, etc.

Why did the guest order cold dishes?

Well, there are copies. Take one directly to the freezer.

Then how do you start working? Have you been cooking by yourself from washing vegetables to cutting vegetables?

Oh, no, I'm only in charge of cooking. After receiving the menu, my assistant will choose the dishes first, and the knife worker will cut them, so that if there are several dishes, they can be parallel.

What about when you're done?

Put it in the window, ring the bell, call the table number and the name of the dish, and the delivery man will send the dish.

……

Among these problems, it involves several activities such as dividing vegetables, cutting vegetables, selecting vegetables, cooking, passing vegetables, serving food, and the roles of waiter, chef, assistant, knife worker, and passing food. The sequence of several activities is also relatively clear.

The business process of another restaurant is different. You can also ask a chef:

What do you want to do? Where does the menu come from?

Print it out.

Are all the dishes printed here?

Oh, only hot dishes are printed here, and cold dishes and drinks will be printed in the cold dish room and drink room.

Who is operating this printer?

Nobody operates it, and it will automatically print different lists for us.

..... The following questions may not be well understood by the chef, so I have to ask the ordering staff.

How do you order?

Bring the equipment. Press a few times to confirm the order.

And after that?

After that, you can print the menu.

Will different cuisines be printed in different cooking rooms?

Yes, we can print them separately. It is in this central printer that orders are divided.

Then, you can continue to investigate the delivery and serving process of food after cooking.

Sort out and present

Your research and observation have given you the raw materials for cooking.

Role: department, post or person

Activity: What did you do?

Order: What is the order of doing these things?

Rule: When will it happen?

Remember the flow chart elements we mentioned earlier? Looking back:

Is the next task very simple? Yes, it's as simple as filling in the blanks. Fill activities/events into the framework determined by departments and time according to certain rules.

This stage is paper work, and you need to present the original data collected in the research stage in a more intuitive and clear way. In order to better evaluate and confirm. It also prepares for future process review and optimization.

At first, the original combination of paper and pen was still the best starting tool. You can temporarily ignore the aesthetic or reusable factors. But when you have enough confidence in the process to be presented, you can use software tools.

3. 1 Decomposition of Complex Processes

It is impossible to present all the activities in one picture.

"Business processes are hierarchical, and this level is reflected in the logical relationship from top to bottom, from whole to part, from macro to micro, from abstract to concrete. This hierarchical relationship conforms to people's thinking habits and is conducive to the establishment of business models of enterprises? Hierarchical relationship table between enterprise departments. Generally speaking, we can first establish the overall operation process of major business processes (including the grand strategy of the whole enterprise), then refine each activity and implement it in the business processes of various departments, and establish relatively independent sub-business processes and auxiliary business processes serving them. "

—— Quoted from Baidu Encyclopedia business process entry

For many newcomers, the most difficult thing to do business is to divide the level of business flow chart.

First of all, make clear the scope of the business process you want to sort out-tell stories within the scope of this business process with big and thick key nodes, which is the top-level business flow chart. Your top-level business flow chart is a simple expression of the overall business story, but please note that the overall business here is not necessarily the overall business of the company, but the business scope you define. For example, the following picture shows the daily operation flow chart of the restaurant. If your business scope is customer-oriented ordering and checkout process, then this is the top-level business flow chart. However, if the business process of the whole restaurant is defined, it is obviously a subset-excluding restaurant procurement, supplier management, first-class inventory management and so on.

Secondly, from the top-level business process decomposition, from coarse to fine. Carding principles of top-level business flow chart:

1. defines the overall business story within the scope.

2. Include the key nodes within this range. Moreover, when questioned why a link does not exist, you should know that it should be included in that key node in the next decomposition. For example, giving away 10 anniversary coupons should appear in the settlement node decomposition. Print orders will be broken down in the ordering node. The preparation of children's seats should be reception and seating.

3. The key nodes decomposed from the top-level flowchart may not all be refined and decomposed to generate the second-level and third-level flowcharts. It depends on whether the "activities" and "roles" involved in the node are complex.

Look at another case to decompose the main business processes of traditional production enterprises. Orange represents the decomposition point, which can be decomposed into four layers. When we decompose into the fourth layer, we find that there are few activities and roles involved in the next step, so we don't need to decompose it any more. Instead, we can directly regard the key nodes of the fourth layer as the "activities" of the third layer business process, instead of the sub-flow chart.

Of course, it depends on your goal of combing business processes. If you just want to analyze and optimize the "proofing" link, you can continue to decompose it.

The work in this step will help you to establish a clear process directory structure, as shown in the figure below, which is the directory structure extracted from a newly completed process carding project. It can be seen that the whole map is the key node at the top level. As a boss, it may be enough to look at this floor. The top floor will be disassembled in more detail below.

“H3。 Sample authentication is only an activity in the top-level business flow chart, but in this level of refinement, it will include detailed sub-activities 1 level participants.

3.2 Common charts of flow chart

I usually use the first two lines of activities, judgments, logical relationship lines, start and end, and the second line of subprocesses and documents/tables. If you are not a symbol controller, I suggest that these are enough.

The "sub-process" icon can help you connect the sub-processes obtained by process decomposition. For example, when "Process A" involves the "A 1. 1" process that needs to be further decomposed, sub-process symbols can be used to represent "A 1. 1" in "Process A". Then your readers will understand that to further understand "A 1. 1", you should refer to another flowchart.

Common structure of flow chart:

Let me show you some cases:

Flowchart that basically contains most of the charts:

Only a few simple flow charts with illustrations are used (they are called program charts in the documents of Taiwan Province Province-but the program here is not a computer program, but a process, which only reflects the processing flow between tasks, so it is not surprising to use extremely simple symbols):

The above two flow chart cases, from the complexity of symbols, one is a complete flow chart and the other is a basic flow chart, but from the form of expression, they all belong to the "swimming lane". This is also our most commonly used expression. The swimlane diagram can well reflect the responsibilities of various departments or roles in the process and the cooperative relationship between upstream and downstream. Moreover, the standard of the flow chart itself is easy to master, and it is easier to understand.

3.3 Main points of lane map

2 big dimensions: generally, the horizontal dimension of lane map will be regarded as the department or post dimension, but there are exceptions, such as the horizontal lane in the above case. The vertical dimension is the stage dimension-time develops from top to bottom. If the lane map is complicated, it can be divided into stages, such as purchasing, production, sales and distribution.

Activity cycle: Activity is like a swimmer, swimming in different lanes to perform tasks.

In the software recommendation section above, I recommend the smartdraw tool, which also comes with a template of the swimming lane diagram to make it easier for everyone to get started:

3.4 Do vs Donnot business flow chart matters needing attention!

Defense Order (defense order)

1. Get stakeholders involved, not behind closed doors.

The business flow chart contains the representatives of each participating role on your chart, and confirm the original flow of things with them in time, and forbid yourself to YY.

2. appropriate level decomposition, don't spread everything on one picture.

As shown above.

Step by step, grab the branches first.

Don't scratch your beard and eyebrows.

This process must begin and end.

Instead of delivering the flow chart, let the reader ask you again: what is the starting point of the process? Complete the first and last steps with clear symbols representing the beginning and the end.

Numbers, numbers, numbers

This is an optimization measure to make communication more efficient. When you have a numbering system, it is equivalent to giving your flowchart a unique identification number. This is more effective than Chinese names. For example, when we complete the business flow chart, the department responsible for reviewing and optimizing the business process rules can clearly convey in the email: H5. 1 process optimization, and everyone will know what it means more clearly.

Dono

The link applied by 1.YY is not a real link.

2. All the links are trying to be put on one picture.

3. Enter the details from the beginning, and grasp the beard and eyebrows together.

It is difficult to tell the beginning and end of this process.

4. Review and follow-up

What is the way to verify whether you have done the above and avoid Donnot?

Very easy to handle, review with you in time. Bring all stakeholders together and show them the results you have sorted out.

This will find some interesting things, besides judging whether your flow chart is in line with reality, it will also judge whether the current business process is in line with the ideal. Representatives from different departments and positions will confirm the status quo in this review, and they will also express their opinions and even quarrel with each other, which is a good opportunity for process optimization. Not for the time being.

Typing is very hard, I hope LZ will like it and adopt it!