A built-in diagram tool, of which SmartArt is the reference implementation, takes a bulleted list and lays it out as a process, a cycle, a hierarchy or a matrix. It's good at one thing, and very good at it: a structurally consistent first draft in twenty seconds. The boxes come out the same size with even gaps between them, and the arrows all point one way. For a five-step process you're still thinking about, that's a real saving. Drawing five rounded rectangles by hand costs several minutes, for a layout you may throw away.
What are the three traps with SmartArt?
The first trap is autofit. The tool sizes the type to fit the longest node, and it applies that size to every node. A seven-node diagram carrying 49 words, whose longest node is 12 words and whose median is 6, autofits to 10 pt. Five of the seven nodes hold 7 words or fewer and could have carried 18 pt comfortably. And this isn't about looks. On a 3.6 m screen viewed from 9.1 m at the back of the room, the legibility rule of thumb requires a cap height of 4.55 cm, which needs 17.33 pt on the slide, so 18 pt is the floor. At 10 pt the cap height on that screen is 2.625 cm, which is legible to 5.25 m and no further. One long node has made all seven unreadable for everyone behind the halfway point of the room. The giveaway is that the type shrank and nobody decided it should.
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The second trap is the layout that asserts a relationship you do not mean. The gallery is organised by shape. It pays no attention to what you're claiming, so a list of five unrelated risks can be dropped into a cycle layout. And a cycle says these five things follow one another and return to the start. A pyramid says these levels rest on the ones below. A funnel says quantity reduces at each stage. Choosing a layout because the boxes fit is how a deck ends up asserting a causal chain that its author never believed.
The third trap is precision. A diagram block is a single object with its own internal geometry, so its nodes cannot be put on the slide's grid, its gaps do not match the gaps elsewhere on the slide, and its text does not sit on the same baselines as the text beside it. The tool offers a conversion to plain shapes. That fixes the geometry and destroys the diagram for good: after conversion the layout logic is gone, and adding a sixth step means drawing it. The trade is usually right, and the rule that follows is about workflow. Use the tool to draft, convert once the content is settled, and never convert a diagram you're still arguing about.
Think of the tool as a sketchpad with good manners. Draft in it, decide in it, and get out of it before you polish.