Charts and processes

A chart and a process are the same object seen two ways. The canvas shows the shape of the work; the table shows what each step costs. Understanding that they are one thing explains most of how the module behaves.

The diagram is the structure

Shapes are steps. Connectors are the routes between them. A Start shape and an End shape mark where the process begins and finishes.

That structure is what the module reads when it traces paths. Every route it finds runs from a Start to an End, and a branch that stops in mid-air is not a path — it is an unfinished drawing.

So the picture is not decoration. It is the input to the analysis.

The table is the cost

Each step can carry a role, an execution type, a duration, a wait, an SLA, and a risk level. Those live in the table behind the canvas, and they are what turn the structure into numbers.

Nothing forces you to fill them in. A network diagram or a wireframe has no steps to cost, and the module is perfectly happy left as a drawing tool.

What the combination gives you

With structure and cost together, the module works out things nobody wants to calculate by hand:

Touch time is the work. Lead time is how long the longest route actually takes. The gap between them is waiting and handoffs, and it is usually the largest and most fixable part of a slow process.

Handoffs count how often work changes owner. Steps past their SLA and bottleneck steps name specific places to look. Detected paths tells you every route through the chart with its own timing, which matters when different branches have very different answers.

Coverage decides whether to believe it

The Process panel reports how many steps are annotated. Every measure is calculated from the annotated ones.

A chart at half coverage will report a lead time, and that lead time will be wrong in a way nothing flags. Check coverage before quoting anything.

What it cannot know

The module measures what you told it. It has no connection to the real work.

It does not know that the durations are optimistic, that the process changed last month, or that one step is skipped whenever the queue is long. It reports the process as described.

That is worth saying plainly because a chart that produces numbers feels authoritative. Its authority comes entirely from the honesty of the person who filled in the table.

Charts is not a workflow engine

Describing a process here does not run it, enforce it, or track real cases against it. Nothing routes work based on what the chart says.

For work that actually moves through stages, Task Boards and Projects do that. Charts is for understanding and improving the shape of the work, not for operating it.

Related

Map a process end to end is this concept applied. Scenarios and versions covers holding more than one version of a process at once.