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I have undertaken to produce a summary diagram showing a complex ETL sequence between financial systems – briefly, there are 5 systems communicating via 7 or 8 major process steps, and a full cycle of updates takes 3 days.
Noting that the ETL steps will of course need to be both maintainable and auditable in the BAU phase, a senior business stakeholder is concerned that cross-process dependencies and the chronological sequence of data flows are not adequately documented.
Question; what type of diagram(s) will provide improved documentation of this set-up?
My ‘gut feel’ is that a Sequence Diagram is the ‘correct’ answer according to purists, a Data Flow Diagram would also enable pertinent aspects of the solution design to be captured, but because these diagram styles are very much technical artefacts, I doubt that they will address the stakeholder’s concerns. Which leaves me contemplating some sort of free-form context diagram and hoping for the best, which I’m sure is a position that can be improved upon.
All suggestions gratefully received!
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Hi Ivor, it does sound like a higher level data flow diagram or context diagram is what is going to suit your purpose. The beauty of the context diagram is that with a lack of a universally agreed upon complete convention, your choices are fairly open (within reason). Take a look at 10.13 in the BABOK v3 re Data Flow Diagrams and the different styles on context diagrams they use within this section.
Your other option, without the full details, could be a process diagram. So the 8 major processes in sequence (if indeed they are) showing the solutions that are used against each major process step.
Happy to hear some other thoughts team.
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Hi Ivor, I think it may be a combination of a context diagram(s) and sequence diagram(s) that are notated in a “nice” way (easy on the eye with simple colours and arrows placed appropriately 🙂 ) to enable stakeholders to understand and provide specific feedback. It’s definitely a challenge to provide readable documentation/presentation that identifies all interdependencies and correct chronological sequences of data flows that anyone will actually check and understand. Good luck! PB
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