Diagrams :: Intro to an Org Chart Software

What are Diagrams?

Diagrams are for visual illustration purposes and they simplify our lives. A single diagram can visualize & express million words. Diagrams are used in almost 97% of the industries at present. Form kinder garden junior to the computer level professional uses diagrams. Especially IT and management professionals use diagrams the most as they needed frequently. The age of drawing diagrams in a paper has changed with the revolution of computer software’s. At present, there are many diagram software’s in the market which helps to fulfill users need in various ways.

There are many types of diagrams such as UML diagrams (Unified Modeling, Language), Block diagrams, organizational charts, wire-frames, flow charts, Venn Diagrams, storyboards… etc. Organizations in modern world use diagrams for their business purposes. Mostly they use diagrams for planning and progress reporting purposes. In modern businesses, professionals use Gantt charts, fish-bone diagrams and org charts for planning stages. And for progress reporting they use different types of diagrams. Some examples are bar charts, pie charts, and scatter plots. Scatter plots are used for statistical purposes. Of all these diagrams beefiness use, org charts (organizational charts) are used for staffing.

Org charts or organizational charts show the higher-achy of a company or a company structure in summery. Org charts give human resource professionals and managerial level an idea of how the company should be organized, managed. Having a company organized is a critical task when managing a modern world business. That is not all; organizational charts can settle the gender balance in an organization. In other words human resource people can know the male: female ratio in a company and word towards balancing it. Organizational charts can also be used to identify key performers in a company. This helps in an organization to evaluate performance of the employees at the annual performance review. Organizational charts are used to determine the wage / salary differences too.

Professional’s in the field uses organizational chart softwares to draw these org charts. There are many commercial organizational chart software as well as free open source ones. Most professional bodies use commercial ones since they use them for business. If you are a business professional who uses diagrams more often I recommend buying commercial organizational chart software. There are org charts software matching your operating system, platform and need. For fly by users it is recommended to use online organizational chart software for simple org charts. Let’s do not forget that some people’s job is to draw diagrams. These professionals use specific software for their diagramming needs.

It is best to know about how to draw an organizational chart. Drawing an organizational chart is not hard. It is easier compared to many other diagrams. When drawing an organizational chart, you should first categorize the levels of your organization in terms of staff. For an example: managerial level, department level, section level and to the employee level. Below figure shows an organizational chart drawn from a org chart software.

After identifying the levels of your organization, it is time to draw them in separate levels of your diagram. Put CEO’s, presidents and directors to the top most level. Then start breaking down other entities such as managers, department heads and employee as branches in a tree. Entities should be in boxes and the upper level should point the level below from an arrow. Here is another organizational chart example of a small / medium level business. After drawing the diagram anyone should be able to understand how each level operates. It is easier to draw org charts from a organizational chart maker rather than using other graphical tools such as Photoshop or paint. If you are on windows or mac there will be plenty of tools available offline, but if it always better to use an online tool like Creately for drawing organizational charts.