**Probably the most common kind of diagram in business & engineering. The basic behavioral chart.**
```mermaid
flowchart LR
a(Write a concept down) --> b(Write down something related) --> c(Draw lines between things)
```
Flow charts are everywhere. Flow charts are in several [[Six Sigma]] tools, Business Process Modeling Notation ([[BPMN]] ), Unified Modeling Language ([[UML]]) and [[SysML]] each have several things that could be broadly categorized as a “flow chart”. Arguably all [[OPM]] diagrams have the potential to be flowcharts, as do half of the constructs in IDEF ([[IDEF]]). The closest thing to the “one true standard” for Flow Charts is what was jointly adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the [[ISO]], including shape definitions for useful things like “process”, “input/output”, “decisions”, and much less useful things like “magnetic tape”, and “collation”.
- The other, more specialized stuff...
They are useful for explaining how processes work. They’re typically fairly intuitive - easy to create and easy to understand. You can even create them using code with tools like [[Mermaid JS]] or [[PlantUML]].
****
# More
## Source
- [The ANSI Flowchart publication](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub24.pdf)
## Related
- [[UML]]
- [[SysML]]
- [[IDEF]]
- [[OPM]]
- [[BPMN]]
- [[Mermaid JS]]
- [[PlantUML]]
- [[Diagram Types (index)]]