Information flow diagram entities

In an information flow diagram, every person, department or organisation that takes part is shown as an entity. Every participant named in a scenario must appear as an entity, so if a parent, a school office, a class teacher and a coach company all send or receive messages, all four are drawn. Leave one out and the reader cannot see who sends or receives part of the information.

The shape an entity takes

Draw each entity as a box, ellipse or circle and write its name inside it, such as parent, school office or coach company. Any of the three shapes is accepted, but keep to one of them for every entity so the reader can see at a glance that each shape of that kind is an entity.

Flowchart symbols are not appropriate. A process rectangle, a decision diamond, an input/output parallelogram or a terminator each means something particular in a flowchart, and none of them means “entity”. An information flow diagram uses entities joined by labelled, directed arrows, so it never borrows the process and data-store notation of a data flow diagram.

A department is still an entity

A department carries out work, but the diagram shows only what information it sends and receives, not the tasks it performs. A reception desk that books appointments is drawn as a single entity named reception, not as a process; the booking activity does not appear at all. A department is drawn exactly like a person or an outside organisation.