A flow chart is defined as a pictorial representation describing a process studied or even used for planning project stages. Flow charts tend to provide people with a common language or reference point when dealing with a project or a process.

On the whole, flow charting has been around for a very long time. In fact, flow charts have been used for so long that no individual is specified as the "father of the flow chart". The reason for this is obvious. A flow chart can be customized to fit any need or purpose. For this reason flow charting can be recognized as a very unique quality improvement method.

Four particular types of flow charts have proved useful when dealing with the process of analysis: top-down flow chart, detailed flow chart, work flow diagrams, and deployment chart. Each of the different types of flow charts tends to provide a different aspect to a process or a task. Flow charts provide an excellent form of documentation for a process, and quite often are useful when examining how various steps in a process work together.

A typical flowchart from older Computer Science textbooks may have the following kinds of symbols:

• Flow chart start and end symbols, represented as ovals or rounded rectangles, usually containg the word "Start" or "End".
• Flow chart arrows, showing what's called "flow of control" in computer science. An arrow coming from one symbol and ending at another symbol represents that control passes to the symbol the arrow points to.
• Flow chart processing steps, represented as rectangles. Example: Add 1 to X.
• Flow chart input/output, represented as a parallelogram. Examples: Get X from the user; display X.
• Flow chart conditional, represented as a diamond (rhombus). These typically contain a Yes/No question or True/False test. This symbol is unique in that it has two arrows coming out of it, usually from the bottom point and right point, one corresponding to Yes or True, and one corresponding to No or False.