Swimlane Diagram: A Guide to Untangling Process Hurdles

Last Updated on September 6, 2022 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

Swimlane Diagram: A Guide to Untangling Process Hurdles

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Does your organization have internal systems that never interact?

Are process hurdles or bottlenecks causing major slowdowns that continuously trigger far-reaching financial impacts in your organization?

Redundancies, bottlenecks, and inefficient processes (or complex systems that complicate processes) can hurt your organization—something that can be helped with the use of swimlane diagrams.

Every year, companies lose more than 20% worth of revenue because of inefficiencies. Even with this loss, many organizations continue to operate without addressing the challenges of process flow, a cause of inefficiency.

Many departments and teams perform tedious manual tasks, making it virtually impossible to maintain productivity or any kind of competitive advantage.

To effectively reduce waste, redundancy, and inefficiency in a process, employ a swimlane diagram, a flow chart that shows who is responsible for what process.

Here’s everything you need to know about swimlane diagrams.

Swimlane Diagram: A Thorough and Updated Guide

Chapter 1: What is a Swimlane Diagram?

Chapter 2: How to Create a Swimlane Diagram

Chapter 3: Examples of Swimlane Diagrams

Chapter 4: Why You Should Use Swimlane Diagrams

Chapter 5: Swimlane Diagram Limitations

Chapter 6: Swimlane as an Element of BPMN 2.0

Chapter 7: FAQs About Swimlane Diagrams

Chapter 8: How SweetProcess Can Help Streamline Multi-Department Processes

Conclusion

Chapter 1: What is a Swimlane Diagram?

What is a Swimlane Diagram?

A flowchart that illustrates who does what in a business process is referred to as a swimlane diagram.

This diagram places steps of processes within horizontal or vertical “swimlanes” of a specific person, department, workgroup, or employee.

A swimlane diagram—using metaphors of swimming lanes in a pool—reveals the details of a process clearly. If a specific process in your organization is complex, the diagram simplifies and makes it easy to understand.

Besides making a process clear, a swimlane diagram shows teams handing tasks to other teams, communication flows, and connections between each swimlane. A swimlane diagram also reveals inefficiencies, redundancies, and hidden wastes in a business process.

Brief History of Swimlane Diagrams

In the 1940s, multi-column process charts (an early variation of flowcharts) became popular, spelling out processes involving multiple units or departments. It bore similarities in purpose to today’s swimlane diagrams.

Almost five decades later, Geary Rummler and Alan Brache brought to light swimlane diagrams in their book, Improving Performance.

That explains why swimlane diagrams are sometimes also known as “Rummler Brache diagrams” in honor of the two gentlemen.

Swimlane diagrams are also aptly referred to as “cross-functional diagrams” in Microsoft Office Visio, a program that allows you to create versatile diagrams using a rich set of shapes, stencils, and templates.

And in the context of computer engineering, JBoss Process Definition Language, a notation that defines business processes, also features the term “swimlane.”

From this history, you can tell people have been trying to bring clarity to business processes for years on end—leading to today’s well-established usages.

Chapter 2: How to Create a Swimlane Diagram

Today, many online tools and software exist that can create a perfect swimlane diagram, but you can also create one as well. It’s easy. Just follow these five steps:

Step 1: Discover Your Purpose

Before creating a swimlane diagram, define your purpose for making it.

Why is the diagram so important to you? And the details you’ll cover in the swimlane diagram, are they enough to make it more efficient?

To start, create a swimlane. Then add a rounded rectangle on top of the lane before you kick start your process.

Step 2: Collect Specific Data

The next step is to collect specific and relevant data required in the swimlane diagram. This data should directly match the purpose of making it.

swimlane diagram - Collect Specific Data

For instance, if you want to describe the performance of your teams, list down all team members in your organization. Then consider factors influencing their performance.

Step 3: Identify the Swimlanes

Once data is collected, identify the swimlanes before you draw the diagram.

Swimlanes are either vertical or horizontal. For easy understanding, label each lane according to the different departments in your organization for clarity.

Ensure tasks are well-organized on the created lanes, such that they lie along the axis of these lanes and nowhere else. Separate different processes using these lanes. Then decide where to categorize your specific processes.

Step 4: Clarify Who and What

In this step, find out who will perform the existing process. Gather their details and then determine what the process is exactly.

Once you categorize the steps in the process, establish communication with the person or teams involved.

Step 5: Shape the Swimlane Diagram

Lastly, after knowing your who and what, shape out your diagram using vertical and horizontal lanes. The chart can take more process steps at this point, so add them and connect each step with the previous step using a straight line.

For the record, steps are added in descending order (top to bottom). To illustrate other divisions in your processes, add steps from left to right while labeling them.

How Can Analysts Use a Swimlane Diagram to Identify Areas of Improvement?

Although a swimlane diagram can reveal areas containing inefficiencies, redundancies, and wastes in a business process, it can also be a useful part of the discovery.

But creating a swimlane diagram is just half the journey. You need to also carefully review all the areas in the diagram to identify key areas for improvement.

Here’s what to look out for in a swimlane diagram that can help identify key areas of improvement with ease:

  • Hand-offs
  • Turnarounds

Hand-offs

In a swimlane diagram, a team member usually “hands-off” a process step to another member in a project. It’s essential to look at how this process takes place, and how much waste occurs during the hand-off.

Getting details of how efficient the hand-off is in transferring crucial information will help you identify key areas that need improvement.

If the hand-off is not the most efficient way to pass information, modify the process then discuss it with specific teams before initiating actual improvements. Doing so allows teams involved to participate in the improvement process that directly affects them.

Turnarounds

Unlike hand-offs, turnarounds push a team member to go “back” to another member to clarify information before proceeding with an assigned task.

In short, turnarounds focus on a team, person, or department in a previous lane on the swimlane diagram before working on their roles.

Turnarounds are essential in a process because they represent an opportunity that explores ways to modify activities (and increase their efficiency) so that work can continuously move forward without delays.

Chapter 3: Examples of Swimlane Diagrams

Examples of Swimlane Diagrams

The best way to understand how a swimlane diagram works is to look at a few examples of swimlane diagrams, and how they apply in different industries.

Recruiting Process

To conduct a recruiting or new employee onboarding process, use this template. The swimlane diagram identifies individuals responsible for each activity in the recruiting process, and other necessary steps required in filling that position.

swimlane diagram - Recruiting Process
Source: smartdraw.com

Financial Accounting Process

To document your processes and ensure your finance and accounting departments are running efficiently, especially if you’re a publicly-traded company, use this swimlane diagram template to draw inspiration.

swimlane diagram - financial accounting process
Source: smartdraw.com

Software Development

The software development process is complex. It involves many teams and ongoing activities. As such, processes can spiral out of control with errors and bugs going undetected, affecting customer satisfaction.

But having a software development swimlane template can help you keep track of your software development process with ease.

swimlane diagram - software development
Source: smartdraw.com

Chapter 4: Why You Should Use Swimlane Diagrams

Why You Should Use Swimlane Diagrams

Tracking multiple processes and teams in an organization or department, at the same time, is both demanding and time-consuming. However, having a swimlane flowchart can effectively ease things by helping with the project and people management.

Here’s why you should use this form of diagramming in your organization.

Promotes Transparency

Creating transparency in an organization is more like ensuring the right-hand knows what the left hand is doing. Your teams, employees, or departments need to know all the steps in your business processes to increase efficiency and productivity—and that’s where swimlane diagrams come in.

They visually highlight which process steps or tasks are assigned to a particular person or team member in the organization because they bring everything in the open for every participant (departments or team members) in the swimlane to see. In short, swimlanes bring transparency to a process.

Eliminates Inefficiencies

Increasing transparency—and spelling it out in the swimlane diagram—helps to identify chronic inefficiencies, waste, and bottlenecks in a business process. Also, it becomes easier to highlight redundancies between different swimlanes.

Pinpointing inefficiencies and redundancies also reveals unnecessary and duplicated steps in a process. For example, different team members or departments could be working on the same task without even knowing it. A swimlane diagram can quickly spot or reveal this problem with ease.

If you’re experiencing delays or capacity constraints in a process within a swimlane, the swimlane diagram can quickly address and resolve this issue, boosting quality and work performance while reducing unnecessary work and costs.

Better Structuring of a Process

To structure or map your business processes even better, use a second swimlane diagram. Having multiple swimlane flowcharts comes in handy when organizational changes take effect, including technology changes or staff changes.

If you want to integrate multiple business processes between teams or departments in an organization, just formalize your swimlane diagrams to create a much cleaner business process regularly.

Instant Communication

Like other flowcharts, Swimlane diagrams help team members in an organization to communicate well and in clearer terms.

Swimlane diagrams help team members in an organization to communicate well and in clearer terms.

The diagrams can also replace meetings because they clarify processes easily and more visually. This helps teams to instantly understand what their roles are and what they should do in every process step.

Effective Problem Analysis

Swimlane diagrams analyze problems more effectively. They visually display what specific action is needed in each step in a process.

It does this well using symbols and shapes. For example, a rectangle shape in a swimlane diagram with rounded edges illustrates the beginning or end of a process. A diamond shape simply identifies the point at which a decision is required.

Chapter 5: Swimlane Diagram Limitations

Documenting processes manually is a time-consuming, mind-numbing activity. It’s nearly impossible to achieve peak performance when you take that route.

Swimlane diagrams come in handy as they visually document processes using vertical or horizontal lanes, making it easy for teams to tell tasks apart between people.

But despite being so effective, swimlane diagrams are laden with limitations.

Lacks Enough Details

While a swimlane diagram is generally mapped at a high level, it’s not detailed enough to explain the entire business process to organizational or departmental teams.

The lack of enough detail reduces the usefulness of using swimlane diagrams to effectively analyze and document business processes from end to end.

Having shapes and symbols organized within horizontal or vertical grids with no room for an in-depth explanation—as to where, who, when, what, and why tasks or decisions are taking place at a specific process stage—makes the diagram impracticable.

Makes Sharing Tasks Difficult

Generally, a swimlane diagram is designed to separate all important tasks in a process between teams, individuals, or departments. But the usefulness of a swimlane diagram is significantly tested when the tasks are shared among the participants.

A team or single person working on a single task in a process is meant to fit in a single lane (either horizontal or vertical) on the diagram. The same can’t be said of an organization with numerous people calling for collaborative and shared work.

Simply put, the swimlane diagram isn’t fit for shared tasks because splitting lanes will make things even more complex, breaking the very thing that makes it useful.

Doesn’t Consider Decision-Based Rules and Procedures

Decision-based rules and procedures that are not made by people don’t have a place on a swimlane diagram. That’s because each lane represents a single individual, team, or department making relevant decisions.

Oftentimes, the person performing a task is left to make decisions based on the set rules of an organization or department.

But it leaves the impression that the individual makes decisions while, in the real sense, they’re under authority to follow the given rules.

Can Overcomplicate Processes

When it comes to mapping processes, swimlane diagrams are on top of the food chain as they provide high-level details.

But too much detail can also mean a messy and less useful swimlane diagram that makes mapping processes even more complex.

swimlane diagrams can overcomplicate certain processes

When creating a swimlane diagram, focus on balancing the details and the diagram’s usefulness. If you can stick to high-level details while ensuring the diagram is more detailed with written documentation, the better.

Not Ideal for Complex Business Processes

Running complex business processes involves too many people and too many tasks. When you load a swimlane diagram with elements from groups of people and tasks, lanes narrow, and texts become too tiny.

Simply put, swimlane diagrams aren’t suitable for complicated business processes. They’re limited to a simple process.

Chapter 6: Swimlane as an Element of BPMN 2.0

Swimlane as an Element of BPMN 2.0

Swimlane diagrams are part of four key elements that form the business process modeling and notation (BPMN), a flowchart methodology technical users and business owners utilize to design and implement processes from start to finish.

As an ISO standardized specification, BPMN 2.0 often dispels confusion to those not familiar with business process management.

So, What Exactly is BPMN 2.0?

As mentioned, BPMN 2.0 is a standardized notation system that models a business process. And it does so effectively using a flowchart just like the one below.

Anyone (think technical users and business users) familiar with business process management clearly understands the BPMN 2.0 standard because it implements complicated processes with ease.

Brief History of BPMN 2.0

The 2004 Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) is the brain behind BPMN.

A year after creating the acclaimed notation diagram, BPMI merged with the Object Management Group (OMG) who later adopted BPMN in 2006.

Four years after its adoption, BPMN morphed into BPMN 2.0 and was released in 2013. In that same year, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) officially certified and published BPMN 2.0 (ISO/IEC 19510).

Uses and Benefits of BPMN 2.0

There’s no better way to create simple process model flowcharts than using BPMN 2.0, a notable business process modeling tool.

By visually displaying the steps in a business process, BPMN 2.0 allows team members to understand how processes work, with enough detail to implement a process.

BPMN 2.0 also helps teams smoothly transition processes from the design stage to the implementation stage by closing gaps between multiple process stages. This allows teams in different departments to efficiently work together.

Unlike other business process modeling tools, BPMN 2.0 flowcharts can morph into relevant process models with the help of XML-based BPMN format.

The Symbols and Shapes of BPMN 2.0

Symbols are the mainstay of a BPMN standard language. The symbols are categorized into four key elements:

  1. Flow objects
  2. Connecting objects
  3. Artifacts
  4. Swimlane

Let’s briefly look at each element separately.

1. Flow Objects

The flow objects elements are used to show the overall flow of work. Flow objects are categorized into three main groups:

  • Events: Anything that kick-starts, alters or completes a process.
  • Activities: People or technology-performed tasks.
  • Gateways: Key decision points.
flow objects

2. Connecting Objects

Every shape in a process finds a way to connect to another shape. Connecting objects are lines that show sequence and message flow, and are classified into three types:

  • Sequence flows: Identifies the order that activities will follow.
  • Message flows: They show how departments will communicate with each other.
  • Associations: Reveals relations between flow objects and artifacts.
Connecting Objects

3. Artifacts

Any additional detail in a business process is considered an artifact. Artifact shapes often come in three types:

artifacts
  • Data objects: They show relevant data needed for an activity.
  • Groups: Displays logical grouping of activities.
  • Annotations: They explain different aspects of a diagram.

4. Swimlane

A swimlane, as in a pool with vertical or horizontal lanes, involves teams in the entire business process. Swimlane diagrams show activities for each team participant.

Chapter 7: FAQs About Swimlane Diagrams

FAQs About Swimlane Diagrams

Here are frequently asked questions (FAQs) about swimlane diagrams.

What’s a swimlane process map?

A swimlane map and a flowchart are almost the same: they both map out loops, decisions, and processes in an organization.

However, a swimlane map places all its actions and events in “swimlanes” that define a specific process or person. A swimlane diagram comprises three key elements: tasks and/or processes, people (or job functions), and time.

What is the purpose of a swimlane diagram?

Besides being a flowchart that outlines who does what in a particular process, a swimlane diagram also serves the purpose of highlighting a specific process step or task assigned to specific teams or departments.

On top of that, swimlane diagrams can help you discover bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or redundancies in a business process, which you can address and resolve later.

A swimlane diagram optimizes organizational structures and creates processes between teams and departments, resulting in organized workflows consistently.

How do you make a swimlane diagram?

Many ways exist of making a swimlane diagram for your organization, but the most common is using a swimlane diagram template. Pre-made templates are easy to use. You can even add more columns and rows to them depending on your needs.

Once the columns and rows are in place, add specific roles and steps of the process to your swimlane template. Then assign responsible teams or departments to specific swimlanes (in horizontal or vertical format) and connect the steps with arrows and lines.

How do you create a swimlane diagram in PowerPoint?

PowerPoint designs beautiful presentations, but its diagram-creating functionalities are pretty limited. Still, it’s possible to create a swimlane diagram in PowerPoint.

Here’s how:

1. Add Swimlane Containers

Open a blank PowerPoint slide to begin the process. Then navigate to the Insert tab and click “Shapes.” Add a rectangle shape to create your swimlane body. Duplicate the rectangular shape to create more swimlanes with title sections.

Group the diagrams and then change the colors in each of them as required.

2. Label Each Swimlane

Because each swimlane represents a different department that contributes to the same process, ensure to label your swimlane diagrams with different title sections.

swimlane diagrams - powerpoint 1

3. Build a Flowchart

The next step is to add a flowchart on your slide using PowerPoint’s shapes. To find shapes, navigate to the Insert tab and click “Shapes.”

swimlane diagrams - powerpoint 2

4. Format the Shapes

To create an even more visually appealing diagram, tweak the colors, shapes, and fonts, or anything else that will improve the format of your diagrams.

How do you create a swimlane diagram using Microsoft Visio?

If you want a basic swimlane diagram with basic data, Microsoft Word (among others) is the go-to program for you. However, if you want an advanced swimlane diagram with more complex information and nuanced images, Microsoft Visio comes in handy.

Creating a swimlane diagram on Microsoft Visio is super easy. Begin by creating a new vision document and then:

Step 1: Create a Flowchart

From the categories tab, choose a vertical or horizontal flowchart or rather, choose the right orientation for your swimlane diagram that serves your purpose.

You can always change the orientation of your swimlane diagram (from the cross-functional flowchart tab) as you see fit.

Step 2: Create Swimlanes

Microsoft Visio can create swimlane diagrams in several ways:

Open the cross-functional flowchart tab on Microsoft Visio and select “Insert group,” then click “Swimlane.” Assuming you have no other previous swimlanes created, your selected swimlane will be added at the end.

Another way to create a swimlane in Visio: navigate to the top corner of the selected swimlane and an arrow will appear. Point to the arrow to insert the swimlane shape.

Click the header of your selected swimlane to choose whether to add “Swimlane” before or after. From the cross-functional flowchart shapes, select a shape you like and drop it where you want it to be on the swimlane.

Step 3: Fix Text

On the shape that contains a text box, click on it to label your swimlane (choose a label that suits your purpose).

If the location of your swimlane label doesn’t please you much, you can reposition it by pressing on the home tab and then choosing the “Text block” tool. Select the orientation of your label, and then drag it to a new location of your choice.

You can also select the cross-functional flowchart tab, click “Design” then press on “Rotate lane label” to change your lane’s orientation.

How do you create a swimlane diagram in Microsoft Word?

Besides being used for writing texts and documents, Microsoft Word can also be used for other purposes, including creating diagrams and charts.

Here’s how to create a basic swimlane diagram in Microsoft Word:

Step 1: Create a New Document

To begin the process, create a new Word document. Change the page layout from portrait to landscape. To do so, select the page layout tab and click “Orientation.” Landscape orientation gives you enough real estate to create a swimlane diagram.

Step 2: Create Swimlanes

Once you create a new Word document in landscape orientation, create swimlanes. To do so, navigate to the Insert tab, click on “Shapes,” and then choose rectangles.

Drag the selected rectangle shape and then adjust its size to ensure it can fit business processes for your swimlane. To label the entity in each rectangular shape, create a smaller rectangle on top.

Once you create the first swimlane, copy and paste it to create multiple swimlanes (depending on the number of processes you want to include in the diagram).

swimlane diagrams - microsoft word 1

Step 3: Label the Lanes

Once you’ve created an outline, the next step is to label the swimlanes.

But before you label the outline, decide on the number of activities or participants to fit in each lane. Once you have all the detailed information, navigate to the Insert tab and click “Text box” to label each entity in each lane.

swimlane diagrams - microsoft word 2

The downside of using Microsoft Word is that the selected shapes won’t fit perfectly in the rectangles. This alters the visual quality of your swimlane diagram.

Step 4: Map Processes

Once you’ve labeled your swimlanes, the next step is to map your business processes. To do so, decide on the number of process steps to include and their order.

Navigate to the Insert tab and click “shapes.” Then create a shape for each step of action in your swimlanes: “Start,” “End,” “Questions,” “Actions,” and “Definitive Actions.”

swimlane diagrams - microsoft word 3

Use arrows and lines to connect each action to the flowchart (in the right sequence) to illustrate the before and after of each action.

Add different colors to your swimlane diagram to define each action without using words or space on the flow chart.

What should I look for when choosing a swimlane diagram software?

Before you choose a swimlane diagram software (Visio or MS Word), focus on a few key things. Here are some of the most relevant:

  • User interface
  • Usability
  • Functionality
  • Integrations

User Interface (UI)

A top swimlane diagram software (or visualization tool) should feature an intuitive and clean UI with attractive presentation options. A quality user interface allows you to share your swimlane diagram with teams or departments with little to no effort.

/whu

Usability

A good swimlane diagram software should have a simple learning curve.

In other words, it should be easy to learn and master. On top of that, it should be laden with high-quality diagram templates to get you started in no time.

If the software is easier to use, then consider whether its company offers free trials, comprehensive training and tutorials, or good technical support.

Functionality

A swimlane diagram software shouldn’t just be usable, but also functional. A functional software boasts several features, including:

  • A drag-and-drop feature(to quickly add, arrange, and align shapes and grids to the swimlane).
  • A wide variety of graphical elements (such as formatting options and shapes, or connectors).
  • Alerts or comments capabilities.
  • Data import feature (to automate the process of creating swimlane diagrams).
  • Export functionality to make it easy to share and export different formats.

Integrations

Can the swimlane diagram software easily integrate and connect with other tools? If the software can integrate with programs already in use in your organization then go for it.

Chapter 8: How SweetProcess Can Help Streamline Multi-Department Processes

How SweetProcess Can Help Streamline Multi-Department Processes

If teams in your organization don’t have an extra level of clarity about who does what in a process, they’re left to make mistakes and guess as to what the best practices are.

SweetProcess brings processes to life using beautiful diagrams in the form of process maps (which are, in essence, swimlanes), and helps teams visually explore key decisions and steps in a process like never before—reducing guesswork and mistakes.

Without swimlane diagrams mapping a process, an organization has no visual representation of how predictable processes run.

By mapping processes using diagrams, SweetProcess fosters a better understanding of processes and identifies areas that require continuous improvement.

Here are real-life examples of businesses that adopted SweetProcess to streamline and map their process features.

How a PR Firm Embraced SweetProcess to Boost Performance

Despite recording great performance, Zen Media, a public relations firm specializing in the tech niche, lacked an operational structure to streamline its processes, a problem that stemmed from employees relying heavily on tribal knowledge to get by.

This got Stephanie Chavez, the company’s CMO, deeply concerned.

“We were always producing great products and doing a great job for our clients, that wasn’t debatable. What was debatable was the “how can we streamline?” and so that was one of the first things that I noticed.”

The firm needed to centralize its knowledge base to avoid teams (who knew how to perform specific tasks but were indisposed) from holding the firm hostage.

Zen Media finally got its biggest break after discovering SweetProcess through its CMO and soon after, they created a knowledge base in the system containing a flowchart with all processes in the firm. This action significantly improved performance in the firm.

“SweetProcess is a great tool [for streamlining processes]. I did some research before and none of the platforms met the requirements I was looking for,” she adds.

How a Brewing Company Structured Its Operations Using SweetProcess

Maintaining quality assurance wasn’t a big problem for Stone & Wood, an Australian-based brewing company that makes quality beer, but updating its processes was.

The company’s teams worked with outdated processes and procedures, altering their entire production and forcing teams to waste precious time and resources.

This problem bothered Thomas Parker, the company’s quality assurance and sensory coordinator, to the point of hunting for a system that his teams could easily use.

And that’s how Parker discovered SweetProcess.

“I did look at several different options online. I can’t recall the specifics, but ultimately it did boil down to a couple, and I liked SweetProcess from its ease of use and how flexible the sign-up was.”

SweetProcess went on to better reposition the company’s operations. It simplified its employee onboarding process, updated tedious business processes, and created a centralized knowledge base for its team members.

Parker reveals that his biggest win with the software is mapping processes on the spot.

“The biggest win for me is, I’ll go out to review a particular facet of the process, and I’ll be able to pull up the [process] on my phone and edit it on the spot.”

How a Marketing Agency Improved Employee Efficiency Using SweetProcess

Though committed to excellent customer experience, Spark Marketer, a go-to digital marketing agency for small- and medium-sized businesses, lacked a documentation process to track its employee performance.

Carter Hawkins, the company’s co-founder, reveals he had no idea of how to track processes or what standard operating procedures (SOPs) were at the time.

“[..] Before we would have these nebulous conversations when we had to let someone go: ‘Well, we don’t feel like you’re doing the job well.’ ‘Show me where I wasn’t doing it well, and I’ll change.’ This is horrible to admit. I’m almost ashamed to say it but, you know, there was no objectivity.”

In the absence of a clear mapping process, the organization created a lack of confidence in its employees’ performances. But it soon adopted SweetProcess that fostered its growth by documenting all processes in one place using beautiful flowcharts.

“[..] With SweetProcess, it is super simple to break things out into new tasks and reorder them so that everything flows in a much more natural way.”

SweetProcess offers various features including flowcharts, videos, images, and texts to breathe life into your documentation process for easy understanding.

Do you want to bring clarity to your processes, define roles and responsibilities in your organization as well? Sign up for a 14-day free trial for SweetProcess today. (No credit card is required for the trial.)

Conclusion

Let’s face it: Diagrams are the holy grail of analyzing and solving problems. They help visually examine a broad and complex problem, sizing it down into finer details.

Many problem-solving diagrams exist including system diagrams and tree diagrams, but swimlane diagrams stick out like a red rose in a sea of gray as they use columns or rows (“swimlanes”) to show the steps of a process.

If you’ve ever worked with multiple teams on a project, finding gaps, inefficiencies, and duplication of efforts is sometimes inevitable.

These problematic areas may be invisible, but they’re so easy to spot when using a swimlane diagram.

A swimlane diagram simply organizes and prioritizes work better by identifying the process you wish to analyze, people involved in the process, and the final result.

Are you struggling to create a perfect swimlane diagram?

SweetProcess lets you create professional-looking swimlane diagrams with intuitive, easy-to-use software.

This cloud-based standard operating procedure (SOP) software also helps you document repetitive tasks in one place so you can grow your team.

To see how easy SweetProcess makes creating professional swimlane diagrams, start a 14-day free trial today (no credit card required).

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