Pitfalls of functional flow diagrams

- Have you ever wondered how many steps there are in starting a car? Five, 10, 50, or even more? If you've done this process many times, you seem to forget all the little steps that are needed just to open the car door. If someone has not even opened the car door before, you will need those detailed step-by-step instructions to achieve the outcome. Always keep in mind that the purpose of functional flow diagrams is to effectively communicate conceptually to all stakeholder levels how information, data, and activities flow to and from external entities and how they pass between the functional areas of your organization. Having said that though, creating functional flow diagram can be as much for you than it is for the project. It is a great tool and a natural progression from the context diagram. Whether you need to officially present this level of documentation to the executives or you were just trying to knot it out in your head, like the context diagram you should have a clear understanding of your organization starting at the highest level. Often there's a step you need to take to ensure coverage before moving on. Warning, if you don't get the initial directional flows mapped and validated then you'll be headed down the wrong path. A major problem is that this step is skipped altogether without realizing by not laying out the functional flow, you are not getting the validated coverage that you need in order to move on as the functional flow diagram is essentially providing you a cross-functional flow to-do list. Because of this, it's very important to validate the flows with each of the functional areas. These other stakeholders who are going to know if a flow triggers an action from them or not. Failing to validate or assuming involvement when creating functional flow diagram can lead you into a tangled mess when trying to do any form of analysis down the track. Remember, when running functional flow workshops keep the participants up at the functional level. There will be a tendency for them to want to explain how they perform all the steps in a function and that can slow the elicitation process down. This level of modeling and analysis is very worthwhile. If you're unable to capture the right level of functions and the right functional areas who perform those activities, your analysis and modeling is doomed from the start. The balancing act here is knowing what level of detail to present. From my experience, it's best to not only validate the functional flow diagram with the represented stakeholders, they share with other areas of the organization who are not involved in the functional relationships. This is a great sanity check that you are able to have the diagram do the explaining of what is going on rather than you having to provide the narrative. If you have to explain it, it has missed the mark. By keeping your functional flow diagram at the self-explaining level ensures greater understanding by many audiences this model will be shared with. So the next time you create your functional flow diagram, think of the high-level steps you take in starting the car rather than the 153 steps that you need to undertake every time.