Flow Charts

Understanding and Communicating How a Process Works

Flow charts are easy-to-understand diagrams showing how steps in a process fit together. This makes them useful tools for communicating how processes work, and for clearly documenting how a particular job is done. Furthermore, the act of mapping a process out in flow chart format helps you clarify your understanding of the process, and helps you think about where the process can be improved.

A flow chart can therefore be used to:

• Define and analyze processes;
• Build a step-by-step picture of the process for analysis, discussion, or communication; and
• Define, standardize or find areas for improvement in a process

Also, by conveying the information or processes in a step-by-step flow, you can then concentrate more intently on each individual step, without feeling overwhelmed by the bigger picture.

How to Use the Tool:

Most flow charts are made up of three main types of symbol:

• Elongated circles, which signify the start or end of a process;
• Rectangles, which show instructions or actions; and
• Diamonds, which show decisions that must be made

Within each symbol, write down what the symbol represents. This could be the start or finish of the process, the action to be taken, or the decision to be made.

Symbols are connected one to the other by arrows, showing the flow of the process.

Tip: There are many other flowchart symbols that can also be used. However, remember that an important use of flow charts is in communication: If you use obscure symbols that only part of your audience understands, there’s a good chance that your communication will fail. As ever, keep things simple!

To draw the flow chart, brainstorm process tasks, and list them in the order they occur. Ask questions such as “What really happens next in the process?” and “Does a decision need to be made before the next step?” or “What approvals are required before moving on to the next task?”

Start the flow chart by drawing the elongated circle shape, and labeling it “Start”.

Then move to the first action or question, and draw a rectangle or diamond appropriately. Write the action or question down, and draw an arrow from the start symbol to this shape.

Work through your whole process, showing actions and decisions appropriately in the order they occur, and linking these together using arrows to show the flow of the process. Where a decision needs to be made, draw arrows leaving the decision diamond for each possible outcome, and label them with the outcome. And remember to show the end of the process using an elongated circle labeled “Finish”.

Finally, challenge your flow chart. Work from step to step asking yourself if you have correctly represented the sequence of actions and decisions involved in the process.

And then (if you’re looking to improve the process) look at the steps identified and think about whether work is duplicated, whether other steps should be involved, and whether the right people are doing the right jobs.

I love this post from Kim Cofino about “The 21st Century Learner.”  She skillfully presents themed ideas for engaging learners through the use of new technologies. Kim’s second presentation, “The 21st Century Educator: The Power of Personal Learning Networks,” demonstrates how web 2.0 technologies change the way learning professionals communicate, collaborate, learn, and teach. Both are worth a look.  Let me know what you think

It is widely thought that WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are the three best Content Management Systems.  So which one should you choose to create your website?

WordPress is extremely easy to use and setup. It’s an excellent system to use when creating a website that lets you quickly get your thoughts out on the web, but while it is often used as a blog, it can be configured to work in many other interesting ways as well.

Joomla is an open-source content management system (CMS). It allows polls, RSS, search, menus, and more. Very cool and customizable templates. Not as user friendly as WordPress, but more robust content management capabilities.

Drupal’s advanced content management system more closely resembles a developer platform than a traditional CMS.

This article might help you decide between

WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal: http://www.goodwebpractices.com/other/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal.html

 

More comparisons…

SlashDot on Joomla vs. WordPress:

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/03/0152241

 

 

Free Background and Image Generators

Thanks to Balkhis for this one…

“As I searched for a complete resource of online generators, I did not find any. I found multiple different categories of online generator lists such as favicon generators, css generators, badge generators, color generators, and so on. So I decided to create this ultimate list of online generators. Each of these generators are hand picked by myself and categorized so it is easy to browse. I believe each of these are extremely useful and time efficient. I use quite alot of these myself. So check out these posts, and I guarantee that after viewing all of these you will be bookmarking this post.”

Check out the free image and background generator collection: http://www.balkhis.com/web-designs-resources/55-extremely-useful-online-generators-for-designers/

Opposites Attract

This decade-old article by Fast Company’s Katharine Mieszkowski crackles with creative intensity and wisdom…

Sometimes the right person for the job is two people. So argues auto designer Jerry Hirshberg, whose world-renowned studio hires people in pairs to spark “creative abrasion.” 

 

When Tom Semple starts to design a new car, he clears away all traces of earlier projects. He relishes the freedom of a blank sheet of paper. He might glance at some engineering specs or a marketing report. But what he’s searching for is artistic intuition: design means inventing entirely new forms. When Allan Flowers starts to design a new car, he worries about nuts and bolts – literally. He conducts a methodical assessment of potential components and materials, of schedules and priorities. For Flowers, form follows function: design means understanding how things work.

Don’t let the differences fool you. Semple, 53, and Flowers, 56, work in the same organization. In fact, they’ve worked on the same projects for 18 years. They were hired as a pair – not in spite of their differences but because of them. They are one of two-dozen odd couples creating vehicles of the future at Nissan Design International (NDI), the influential studio based in La Jolla, California.

Jerry Hirshberg, NDI’s founder and president, calls this practice “hiring in divergent pairs.” When it comes to creativity, he argues, the best person for the job is often two people – people who see the world in utterly different ways. “I believe in creative abrasion,” says Hirshberg, 58, who began his career nearly 35 years ago as a “paid renegade” for General Motors. “And I mean abrasion. We have titans in their fields going at each other: ‘I’m sorry, I see the project this way. The way you’re approaching it is just absurd.’ That friction can produce wonderful creative sparks.”

Those sparks have been flying at NDI http://www.nissan-design.com for nearly 20 years. Hirshberg left GM in 1979 to create Nissan’s first design studio in the United States. Since then his organization has produced a stream of trend-setting innovations, including the Pathfinder sport utility vehicle, the Infiniti series, and the Mercury Villager minivan. More than 4 million cars designed by NDI are on the road today. The shop has won countless awards. Hirshberg is recognized as a design visionary. And he’s about to publish a book, The Creative Priority: Driving Innovation in the Real World (Harper- Business, February 1998), about his approach to creativity.

That approach begins with his creative ideas about hiring. And like most new ideas, “hiring in divergent pairs” began by accident. After Nissan recruited him from GM, Hirshberg had to find great designers to join him. Semple and Flowers, both of whom had worked for Hirshberg in Detroit, agreed to join the new venture — which was about the only thing they did agree on. “They were spectacularly gifted but utterly different,” Hirshberg says. “They were from different solar systems.”

That creative tension quickly began paying dividends. The pair’s first big project in the early ’80s was to design a killer-looking light truck that would not only wow Nissan’s leadership in Tokyo but also win over the mass market in the United States. Semple dreamed up a truck with a muscular body reminiscent of the sports cars of that era. Flowers created a more rational prototype. The Nissan brass chose Semple’s design. But the truck that rolled o/ the assembly line incorporated a key component of Flowers’s design in its truck bed.

“Bringing these two together created an immediate vitality, a crackling intensity,” Hirshberg says. “Each approached a project with utterly different priorities and workstyles. The pairing was so successful that we said, ‘Let’s keep doing this.’”

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/12/rftf.html