18. Flow Charts - introduction

Most things that we do in life can be broken down into a series of steps.

For example, lets take making a sandwich. What steps do you need to follow?

• Get the bread out of the packet
• Get a knife out of the drawer
• Get the butter out of the cupboard
• Get ham out of the fridge
• Spread butter on the bread
• Add ham on top of one slice
• Put second slice of bread on top of ham
• Use knife to cut bread
• Put sandwich on a plate

There are lots of stages to this simple task. Some of them need to be done in a certain order or before others. For example, you need to get the knife before you can butter the bread. You need to add the ham before you can cut the sandwich.

Flow charts are an useful addition to the analyst's tool kit.