those words were spoken by a great man: none other than ‘terrible’ terry tate — office linebacker.

it’s a simple phrase, “where’s your flowchart, baby,” but it’s an important one. it’s important because a picture is worth a thousand words. flowcharts can help you in so many ways.  here are just a couple…

flowcharts are a decision making tool
you can use flowcharts to help you in your decision making. if you have a process that is repeatable, you can set up a flowchart to help direct that process to an end goal. if for each data dump you receive from the client, you need to classify it as belonging to one of two or more categories, a flowchart can help you place it in the right bucket. “does this have personally identifiable data? if yes then a, if no then b.” you can walk that tree all the way down to your final buckets: “this belongs in the transactional database.” or “this belongs in the data warehouse.” — etc.

more after the jump! Continue reading →