UML Modeling (2)--Flow Chart

This article will contain several pieces of content:

Flow chart = flow chart.

Process: Flow refers to a series of operations with specific logical relationships carried out by specific subjects in order to meet specific needs. Processes exist naturally. But it can be irregular, it can be unfixed, and it can be full of problems. So it will appear that there is no process.

Figure: Chart or Diagram is to make the basically solidified and regular process explicit and written, which is conducive to dissemination, precipitation, and process reorganization reference.

It can be seen from the definition that as long as there are things and tasks, there will be processes. However, not all processes are suitable to be represented by flow charts. There are certain processes that are suitable to be represented by flow charts. The level is fixed and rules can be followed, and the key links in the process will not be changed overnight.

● Participants: Who is in the process? It can be a system, it can be a printer, it more generally refers to a role - usually a person with a certain type of work. For example, there are two customer service staff, Little A and Little B, but if their work nature is exactly the same, then only one customer service role needs to be written in the flow chart.

● Activity: what you did, such as ordering food, checking out and other activities.

● Sequence: In what order do these things happen? Which task is the prerequisite for other tasks? For example, if a customer does not check out, there will be no activity to give him a discount card.

● Input: Each activity starts with what kind of input or data. For example, when a cook starts cooking, he needs to get the specific order menu.

● Output: After each activity, what kind of documents or data will be input and passed to the next party. For example, after the chef prepares the dishes, how to let the person responsible for passing the dishes know that the dishes are ready?

● Standardization: Use a standardized set of symbols to convey your flow chart so that the audience can understand it faster.

Common flow charts include business flow chart (Transaction Flow) and page flow chart (Page Flow).

At work, as a UED, you may find that PDs often talk about business processes, while as interaction designers, we produce more page flow charts. What is the relationship between page flow chart and business process chart? Who comes first, and who comes second?

Let me tell you a story first: Suppose your dream is to open a mid-to-high-end national chain restaurant, then the first thing you think about should not be how to choose a location, but why you want to open a chain restaurant. Think clearly about your positioning and core competitiveness. Is it fast food, ordering, chain or franchise? Is it positioned in a community or a bustling business district? Is it Sichuan cuisine or Jiangsu and Zhejiang seafood? Is it for middle-aged and elderly people or young people? Is it a family theme or an anime theme? Who are the competitors? What kind of investment is needed? What are the possible risks? Now that we have thought through these things clearly and all the questions have answers, the so-called strategic level should be clear. Then suppose you analyze and analyze now, and decide on a direction with the main investors: a chain of fashionable animation tea restaurants for young people, but start the first one in Hangzhou, and locate the location in an area where young people date and sweep the streets. , such as scenic spots, famous business districts, next to movie theaters... etc., etc., then what next?

The next step is to find a way to make these happen, right? So what needs to be done? Site selection? Pull investment? Doing renovations? Choosing a catering menu? Hire staff? How to do each step and what is the time? Waiting for the task dismantling and planning, you need to go to the tactical level.

To carry out these things, you always need to hire someone, right? First, the core team divides labor to deploy various construction tasks. When the restaurant is opened, it is necessary to organize a stable operation team, such as service, sanitation, kitchen, purchasing, personnel, etc. There is also division of labor in the kitchen, white tables, hot dishes, Wait for the cold dishes, right? Does each department need to set up management and reporting relationships? So your organizational structure is born.

So how do each role work together smoothly to complete daily, stable and unexpected tasks? For example, when a customer comes to the door, who will guide the customer to sit down, who will take the order, and how to quickly transmit the order information to the kitchen and distribute it to the wine room, cold dish room, and hot dish room? And ensure that guests can eat the dishes they ordered as soon as possible? You must consider the collaboration processes of various personnel and optimize efficiency, so business processes emerge.

Renrou has been operating for a while without any ordering system, and you may find that it is okay. When a customer orders food, the waiter writes down the customer's request by hand. Because there is copy paper, the waiter can send the copy to the kitchen and write down the table number at the same time. The kitchen is small. The employees responsible for assigning tasks look at the menu, write down what needs to be done on the blackboard in the cold dish area, then go to the blackboard in the hot dish area to write down the dishes to be processed, and go to the wine room to report. Just drop the product name. However, with the expansion of operations, many problems have arisen with the above human fleshing method. First, the handwriting efficiency is too low, customers frequently change dishes, the response is late, and handwriting errors occur, resulting in the wrong dish being often reported. The kitchen was in a mess and we had to hire a few extra people to run the kitchen. Once the customer wants to add dishes, it is even more troublesome to withdraw the dishes. They need to find out the dishes they ordered at that time, and then make manual comments and modifications. At the same time, they need to modify the various blackboards in the back end of the kitchen...

So you want to To develop an intelligent system to replace a lot of human work, you hired a system development team. After evaluation, they determined that everything from ordering to delivery can be solved with the system. The handheld terminal can quickly transmit the customer's ordering requirements to the printer. The printing system can automatically print separate orders according to the type of food ordered by the customer, so the hot dish room can see its own hot dish menu, and the cold dish room can see its own cold dish. menu, while the hotel menu is seen in the wine room. When they are ready, they send it out. The waiter can pass the dishes according to the name of the dish and the printed receipt, and check it against the customer's order receipt. This system must also be equipped with a settlement system to pass the final confirmed menu and consumer prices to the settlement front desk, so that the cashier can quickly operate.

This system needs to be displayed eventually, so how to design the interface of the handheld terminal? Can a waiter complete an order with fewer clicks? How to design the interface of the settlement center?

Through the above story, do you understand the relationship from strategy, tactics, business flow chart to page flow chart better? To summarize:

●First, there is a business need and business goal, that is, what is our vision? (Strategy)

●Then what kind of tasks do we need to decompose and how to implement tactics? (Tactics)

●Then the question arises: what departments need to be structured, and how should the positions be divided and coordinated? (Organizational structure)

●Then the business process of different departments collaborating to complete a certain task was born? (Business process)

●After the business process is basically stable, optimization of efficiency will often be considered, so a system will be born to support the process, reduce human flesh links, and promote data collection (system vision)

●In order to design this system, PD needs to think about what functions can replace the human work of a certain link (functional requirements, system processes)

●No matter what kind of functions, they will eventually be presented in the form of an interface, and the design The engineers will pay attention to the user's task flow and behavioral path in the system, so that users can complete tasks more efficiently and happily. (Page process)

Of course, in addition to business processes, system processes, page processes, and data processes are also of concern.

In our daily work, we often hear people talk about swim lane diagrams, task flow charts and other concepts. What is the relationship between them?

At work, we often see two types of business process diagrams. From the perspective of expression, one is easy to distinguish, commonly known as the "swim lane diagram", and it does look like a "swim lane diagram". Swim lanes can have horizontal lanes or vertical lanes. Swim lane diagrams are called "activity-based flow charts" in some documents, and what floats in the swim lanes are activities one by one.

There are several key points in the swim lane diagram: two dimensions, activity flow, and process elements.

Another type is a flow chart based on departments and positions. The circles in the picture below represent each department or position. Rectangles represent activities. This kind of flow chart focuses on the logic of how things are done, but is weak in reflecting the responsibilities of each department. If someone in a certain position looks at it, it is difficult to see the responsibilities and tasks of his department at a glance like a swim lane diagram. So it is used less now.

Flowcharts can provide a simple and concise "thumbnail bird's eye view" to help viewers quickly understand how the business works. It contains several keywords: who, when, under what conditions, what was done, what was input, what was output, who was output to...

Unlike system processes, business processes pay more attention to Regarding how the business itself operates, it tells the business story and contains business rules. The system process satisfies the business process and realizes the informatization and systematization of part or all of the process.

Therefore, business process is a prerequisite for all links - software requirements analysis, and information system construction will also first sort out business processes.

The following shows how business process diagrams work in three main scenarios:

1. Training

In this scenario: Flowcharts can Provide a quick view of how the business operates. Through the business process map, new employees can quickly understand what the ultimate goal of the business is, which roles are involved, their responsibilities, and the connections between them.

In addition to training new employees, in employee rotation and transfer scenarios, employees also need to refer to the business flow chart to understand how the new work content is carried out, as well as where they are and who their upstream is. Who is downstream and what work content needs to be delivered?

2. Process optimization and reorganization

The existence of Business Process Reengineering can be clearly refuted: its existence is reasonable. In fact, the existing business processes are not reasonable. It may be that the multiple roles involved are accustomed to a certain practice. It may be that the changes have not yet affected the end operations. There may also be a lack of insight into the problems of the running business processes. And strong change promotion - because to promote business process change, it is not a matter of one department, but requires the full cooperation of all departments in the process.

More often than not, business process optimization is top-down, but bosses may not be so well aware of the actual operating business processes. Business process diagrams can well represent this "operation model" .

By looking at the business process diagram and finding people to visit at key nodes, you can directly cut into: Why should we do this and why not do this? This leads to exploring deeper questions rather than asking: What do you do now?

Through research, analysis of business process diagrams, and the introduction of more roles, problems in the current business process can be analyzed: deficiencies, duplications, risks, efficiency, etc. To formulate corresponding optimization plans.

3. The basis of informatization

As in the case of Restaurant Dream mentioned above, one of the tasks of the information system is to liberate the hands and feet of employees and replace some repetitive human labor tasks . After the system is installed, it does not mean that the business process is not needed, but that after some adjustments, one of the participants becomes a system, a handheld device, or a printer.

So when doing system functional design and system process design, is it necessary to first understand how the current business operates? This will allow for better analysis and better explanation of what types of human flesh work the system has replaced in what aspects?

Therefore, the PRD we see often starts with a business process diagram. When describing the benefits of a system construction, we can also compare the previous business process with the business process after the system is installed. . Based on the analysis, clearly write down the functional points required for the system behind the new business process diagram in the vision.

First draw the business process diagram itself. Is there a process? There must be some. I heard a saying in software engineering: everything is an object. So in process science, everything is a process. Is there no process for eating? As far as the movements of eating are concerned, there is a process: holding chopsticks - picking up food - mouth - chewing - swallowing.

So, is there a process that can be followed for drawing a business process diagram? I suggest you start with the following 4 steps.

1. Research

How to quickly understand the truth about business operations? Do you have any research tips to share?

2. Sorting and presentation

Can the text and questions obtained from the survey be quickly transformed into a business flow chart?

What is the standard representation of a business process diagram?

How to evaluate the quality of a business process diagram?

3. Review and confirmation - can the business process diagram truly reflect the real business?

4. Archive maintenance - processes are constantly changing. How can business process diagrams respond quickly?

Before drawing a business process diagram, thinking about how beautiful it is, how to interact with it, and what tools to use should not be the focus.

The real focus is to collect the key elements of the business process diagram. Please try to answer the following questions clearly, otherwise do not start drawing the flow chart:

In addition to the questions at the beginning of this section, in fact, the research process still solves who, what, why, How, and where questions: Who, under what circumstances, did what, what prerequisites did it require, what was output, and where was it completed? Once we understand these questions, our research can be successfully completed.

To express the flow chart, you need to answer these questions:

1. Who——Who? Department, role, position

2. What——What happened?

3. Where——Where was it done? In the business process diagram I sorted out, where refers more to documents or various systems to indicate the degree of informatization. For example, when we sorted out and found that there was a registration that was carried out using excel instead of the business system, then the where here can be expressed as: excel document.

4. Document - What is the name of the generated document? Also written out, it means that the document has been transferred. If informatization is to be carried out in the future, this human flesh document also needs to be eliminated and replaced by the system. (On the contrary, if this work is performed in a certain system, where can be written as "Personnel System", and the document can continue to exist, that is, the form name in the system: "Employee Registration Form")

5. Condition——Condition. 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 represents the pre-input conditions of this activity.

6. Decision——Decision. Some activities will generate a conditional judgment, and different branch processes will be followed based on different judgment results. For example, when entering employee information, you can choose different processes based on whether the employee has been employed before. For those who have already been employed, the previous job number is selected instead of generating a new job number.

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

During the survey:

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

Research the person who performs the specific operation to verify whether what he explains to you is comprehensive and accurate.

On-site observation and recording (take time to walk through the business process)

The three methods are used in conjunction with each other. The first method allows you to first establish a system view and understand the general branches, but it is difficult to get into the details where problems may arise. The second method relies too much on the quality of the question and the context in which it is asked. Many conclusions are incorrect because the wrong person is asked or the question is asked in the wrong way. Then you need to use the third method and verify it through observation.

Among these questions, it involves the activities of "ordering", "cutting vegetables", "choosing vegetables", "cooking", "passing dishes" and "serving dishes", as well as " "Waiter", "Chef", "Assistant", "Cutter" and "Server". The order of several activities is also clearer.

The chef may not understand the following questions, so you need to ask the ordering staff.

Your research and observations give you the raw materials you need to "cook".

Isn’t the next task very simple? Yes, it is as simple as filling in the blanks. Fill the activities/events into the boxes determined by the two dimensions of department and time according to certain rules.

This stage is paper work. You need to present the raw materials collected during the research stage in a more intuitive and clear way. This allows for better review and confirmation. Also prepare for future process review and optimization.

It is impossible to put all activities into one picture.

"Business processes are hierarchical. This level is reflected in the logical relationship from top to bottom, from whole to part, from macro to micro, and from abstract to concrete. Such a hierarchical relationship is in line with people's needs Generally speaking, we can first establish the overall operating process of the main business processes (including the overall strategy of the entire enterprise), and then analyze them. Each activity is refined and implemented into the business processes of each department, and relatively independent sub-business processes and auxiliary business processes that serve them are established. ”

——Quoted from "Baidu Encyclopedia" Business Processes. Entry

For many newcomers, the most difficult thing about business is dividing the levels of business flow diagrams.

First of all, clarify the scope of the business process you want to sort out - use large and rough key nodes to tell the story in this business process scope clearly, which is the top-level business process diagram. Your top-level business process diagram is a simple expression of the overall business story, but please note that the overall business situation here is not necessarily the overall business situation of the company as a whole, but the business scope you have defined. For example, the picture below is the daily operation flow chart of a restaurant. If the business scope you define is the customer-facing ordering and checkout process, then this is the top-level business flow chart. But if you define the entire restaurant's operational business process, then this is obviously still a subset - it does not include the restaurant's procurement, supplier management, first-level inventory management, etc.

Secondly, start with the decomposition of the top-level business process, from coarse to fine. Principles for sorting out top-level business flow charts:

1. Define the overall business story within the scope.

2. Include key nodes within this range. Moreover, when you are questioned about why a certain link does not exist, you must know which key node it should be included in the next level of decomposition. For example, giving away 10th anniversary coupons should appear in the checkout node decomposition. The printed order will be decomposed in the ordering node. Preparing child seats should be part of the reception and seating process.

3. The key nodes decomposed in the top-level flow chart may not be decomposed in detail to generate second-level and third-level flow charts. This depends on whether the "activities" and "roles" involved in the node are complex.

Let’s look at another case to decompose the main business process of purchase, sale and inventory of traditional production enterprises. The orange represents the decomposed point, which can be decomposed into four layers. When we decompose it to the fourth layer and find that there are very few activities and roles involved in the further process, there is no need to decompose it anymore. Instead, the key nodes of the fourth layer can be directly used as the "activities" of the third layer business process. ” instead of a subflow diagram.

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

This step of work will help you establish a clear process directory structure. As shown in the figure below, it is an excerpt from the directory structure part of a process combing project that was just completed. You can see that the whole picture is the key node at the top level. As the boss, you may only need to look at this layer. Below we will do more detailed dismantling of the top layer.

"H3. Sample certification" is just an "activity" in the top-level business flow chart, but at its own refined level, it will include detailed sub-activities and first-level participants.

What I commonly use are the "Activity", "Judgment", "Logical Relationship Line", "Start and Termination" in the first two lines, and the "Sub-Process" and "File/ form". If you are not a symbol person, I suggest these are enough.

Among them, the "sub-process" icon can help you connect the sub-processes obtained by decomposing the process. For example, when "A process" involves "A1.1" that needs to be further decomposed "Process", you can use the sub-process symbol to represent "A1.1" in "A Process". Your readers will then understand that they should refer to another flowchart for further understanding of "A1.1".

Common structures of flowcharts:

Let me show you some cases:

Basically a flowchart that contains most of the diagrams:

A simple flow chart using only a few diagrams (called a program chart in Taiwanese documents - but the program here does not refer to a computer program, but a process, which only reflects the processing flow between tasks, so It’s not surprising to use extremely simple symbols):

In terms of the complexity of the symbols, one is a complete flow chart and the other is a basic flow chart, but in terms of the form of expression Generally speaking, they all belong to the "swim lane diagram" - Swimlane. This is also our most commonly used form of expression. Swim lane diagrams can well reflect the responsibilities of departments or roles in the process as well as the upstream and downstream collaboration relationships. Moreover, the standards of the flow chart itself are easy to grasp, and it is easier to achieve complete knowledge.

Verify whether you have achieved the above DO, and what is the method to avoid Donnot?

It was easy to handle and reviewed with everyone in a timely manner. Bring all the stakeholders together and show them the results you've sorted out.

This will reveal some interesting things. In addition to reviewing whether your flow chart conforms to reality, it will also review whether the current business process conforms to the ideal. Representatives from different departments and positions will confirm the current situation during this review, and they will also give each other opinions and even quarrel. This is a good opportunity to optimize the process. Let’s not express it for now.