How to determine which diagram to use and why

- Start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start. This is a song that belongs to one of my family's favorite movies that we all sing along to, "The Sound of Music". We can apply these song lyrics to the way we structure and capture business processes. Throughout this course, you will not have only been introduced to the four most common process models, but you'll have seen how they integrate with each other. You'll have gained an understanding of how beneficial and logical it is to begin your analysis at the highest level, then work your way down. Let's recap and see your journey from the initial context diagram of your organization, all the way through to the flowchart process maps. First up, we explored how your organization fits in the big picture and relates with the outside world. This is called the context diagram. Context diagram captures the relationships, input, and outputs that help your organization understand what is needed by these external entity relationships to deliver products and services to customers. These diagrams assist in understanding who and what you do to comply or influence in achieving the outcomes you're expecting. Your functional flow diagram shows a number of functional areas internal to your organization, and how they interact with the customer, being an external entity and each other. You have far greater influence and possible control over how your organization performs the required activities. The cross-functional flow diagram is exactly that, focusing on how the flow of work moves across the functional areas of your organization. This diagram should contain the complete end-to-end process of a single transaction or interaction from the initial customer trigger through to the delivery of a service or product. These diagrams are immensely valuable when it comes to seeking how you can sequence or change the activities to ensure greater efficacy or required compliance. You then have the ability to perform time and motion analysis to inform better ways of delivering the required outcome. Though placing too much information into these diagrams will dilute their value, imagine how many detailed processes would need to be captured. There would be potentially thousands of steps that need to be completed to cover the end-to-end process. This is where subprocesses come in. Through the creation of this diagram, you'll have identified many subprocesses. Finally, we take all of the subprocesses that are in our cross-functional flow diagram and expand them into the finest level of detail in what you now know as flowchart process maps. The more sub processes that you identified in your cross-functional flow diagram, the more flowcharts you will need to map. This is a beautiful way of visualizing how fundamentally your cross-functional flow diagram provides the context for every flow chart process map that belongs within That's why, when used in conjunction, both are used to create instructional guides and other training materials like online knowledge center content, quick reference guides, and training manuals. Business process modeling enables greater clarity when we decompose activities across the processing modeling hierarchy. This enables you to analyze the different areas of change management to identify the amount of training required, and the number of resources required to perform the tasks in the existing or new environment. So the next time you're wanting to know where to start, sing along with me, ♪ Start at the very beginning ♪