A diagram of the data flow from sources through processes and files to users. A source or user is represented by a square; a data file is represented by rectangles with missing righthand edges; a process is represented by a circle or rounded rectangle; and a data flow is represented by an arrow.
Published in Chapter:
Data Flow Diagram Use to Plan Empirical Research Projects
Jens Mende (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 10
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch020
Abstract
Yourdon and Constantine (1979), De Marco (1979), and Gane and Sarson (1979) introduced the data flow diagram (DFD) more than a quarter of a century ago, as a systems planning tool that is particularly useful in the fields of software engineering and information systems development. But the DFD is not restricted to those fields. Empirical research projects are systems too (which consist of interconnected sources, data, collection processes, files, analysis processes, knowledge, and users), and those systems are similar to information systems. This article reports how the DFD can also be useful in planning empirical research projects. This finding should be advantageous to research planners, individual researchers, research advisors, research supervisors, or research managers. And it should be especially advantageous to research planners in information and communication technology (ICT) because they know DFDs already, so they can get the planning advantages with little or no extra learning effort. This finding was obtained from two research projects. The first was planned without the aid of a DFD and failed. It was then replanned with a DFD and redone in a second project, which succeeded.