What's the name for those diagram used to sketch the flow of a program?

Question

What's the name for those diagram used to sketch the flow of a program? What are these sketches called?

The shapes of the objects are by convention ellipse for an action, rhombus for a question, rectangle for a statement, etc.

Answer 1

Flowchart or Decision Tree.

Probably the most traditional term, in spite of my preference, is Flowchart, from the traditional, waterfall engineering model. It is commonly used in software, business, and industrial engineering.

I tend to prefer the latter term in this context. The term Flowchart is often misused (as we know, many people aren't formally educated). I've seen people refer to any sort of diagram with processes, data and system-components as a Flowchart, when actually they have a Data Flow Diagram or Component Diagram, which are other common software engineering diagrams. With "Decision Tree", I feel like I'm being more specific.

Some common engineering diagrams:

• Flowchart
  
  • Decision Tree
  • Data Flow Diagram
• Component Diagram
• Entity Relationship Model (aka ER or ERD)
  • Logical Data Model (database independant)
  • Physical Data Model (database specific)
• Object Model (differs from an ER Model)

Answer 2

It's probably a Flowchart, but the title asks a different question than the body, which I will try to address next.

One common convention is UML (Unified Modelling Language) from the people over at the excellently named, OMG (Object Management Group). http://www.omg.org/gettingstarted/what_is_uml.htm

There are a number of different diagrams which runs the gamut from Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams (similar to a flowchart), sequence diagrams (my particular favourite), Class diagrams, and many many more including modelling business processes at large organisational scales.

The specifications list might be a good start if you want to know more: http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/