Saturday 11 April 2015

Hand-drawn Process Flows: Part 4 - Hand-drawn Process Template

A Free Document Productivity Tool For Visio

This post provides a template to use with the hand-drawn process flow shapes. It allows you to complete model simple process flows using Visio's swimlane template. 

The Hand-drawn post series looks like this:

  • Part 1 - Introduction - How the hand-drawn look is created. Shows all shapes.
  • Part 2 - Basic Shapes - Good for most process flows.
  • Part 3 - More shapes - For more advanced models.
  • Part 4 - Building a hand-drawn template.
  • Part 5 - Final post - Three more great hand-draw shapes for process flows.

The Template


The Template allows you to prepare simple swimlane style process models.









It is based on the standard cross functional process flow template provided by Visio and has been tweaked to make entering process flows in the hand-drawn style.

  • The font throughout is comic sans for that handwritten look.
  • The default connector is has a complementary colour and style settings



Pools


The cross functional template does not support the concept of BPNM pools.  I guess that is why Microsoft want you to buy the Professional version where you get inbuilt BPNM capability.



To simulate pools, all I do is create a very small lane and fill the end with black.









SmartAudit Shape

The audit box provides a convenient place to record audit information. It is always worth branding your models.

You can click into the prepared by and date boxes or use F2 to edit each piece of text.  The filename is automatically derived from the document properties and is an example of how fields can be presented inside shapes.

The audit box in its non-hand-drawn format is one of the earliest shapes I