How To Create A Swimlane Diagram In 7 Effortless Steps

Are you someone who appreciates having clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and processes in your work? Who doesn’t?! A swimlane diagram provides this clarity by reducing ambiguity and making it easier to do the work that’s important to you.

Building a swimlane diagram is also known as swimlane process map. It also happens to be a foundational skill for practicing lean / continuous improvement.

Building these process maps used to be a tedious and time consuming activity. Don’t worry though, it is now more efficient than ever with the use of software and online tools. You can drastically shorten the time it takes to build process maps by using Microsoft Visio, Miro, or Mural which I’ll explain more about.

Here’s everything I’ll cover in this post:

• What is a swimlane diagram
• Benefits of a swimlane diagram
• How to create a swimlane diagram
• How to identify process improvements with swimlane diagrams
• Tips
• Tools I use to create swimlane diagrams
• Final Thoughts

What is a Swimlane Diagram?

A swimlane diagram is a visual flowchart that breaks down process steps and the stakeholders who perform them. They make it easy to see an entire cross-functional process from beginning to end with an added benefit of seeing who (stakeholder, department, role, individual, etc.) performs that process.

The reason it is called a swimlane is because each row (or swimlane) on the process map is intended to designate a different stakeholder in the process.

In my career, I’ve come across the phrase “working in silos” very often. This phrase describes a situation in which individuals and teams are working in their own bubbles, usually with the shared objectives of another department or team. 

A silo dynamic in processes breaks down communication and prevents cross-functional collaboration. The graphic below from lucid chart highlights additional dangers of silo mentality.

Photo Cred: Lucid Chart

The result is that processes tend to be more inefficient, more costly, and lower quality. All of these results will be experienced by your customer, making your organization less competitive.

The goal is to visualize processes, breakdown silos, build collaboration, build clarity, and create accountability.

Let’s look at an example below that maps the process of a patient coming into an urgent care clinic that I created on a Miro whiteboard.

Benefits of Swimlane Diagrams

Creating swimlane diagrams has been a core tool in my career as a continuous improvement leader. When consulting on how to improve a process, my starting point is to understand the process by mapping it out. This often sheds a lot of light to my stakeholders and clients when I bring them into this step.

I typically hear “Wow, I had no idea all of these steps were happening”, “There are way too many steps here, let’s figure out how to make this more efficient”, “I can see where the process is breaking down and causing confusion”.

Additional benefits I have observed and experienced when building out these process maps with teams are:

• Giving clarity on roles and responsibilities
• Helping to understand and breakdown complex processes – especially when trying to learn a new process
• Seeing where there is waste in a process
• Identifying improvement opportunities
• Breaking down silos
• Promoting team collaboration
• Enabling cross-functional teams
• Problem solving from the people working in the process
• Validating feelings about silos and disconnections

Organizations are striving to be more competitive than ever. Establishing clear and defined processes is a powerful strategy to staying competitive. Building swimlane diagrams builds that clarity and definition.

In the next section, we’ll talk about how you can easily create these diagrams.

How to Create a Swimlane Diagram

Creating a swimlane diagrams has gotten so much easier over the years with the help of software and online programs. In the early days of my career, process maps were built out with stacks of sticky notes on an empty whiteboard or wall. Whether you are building out a physical or virtual process map, the steps are essentially the same.

Creating a Swimlane Diagram in 7 easy steps:

1. Identify the process you want to map
2. Identify the first and last steps of the process
3. Document the stakeholders and different roles who are involved with the process starting with your customer or client
4. Draw “swimlanes” or rows for each stakeholder with the customer or client in the top row
5. Plot the first step of the process on the top row
   1. Note: your customer or client typically initiates the process with a request, need, etc.
6. Document each subsequent step in the process going top to bottom and left to right under each stakeholder
7. Connect the process steps with arrows to indicate the flow and sequence

After building out a first draft of the process map, you should meet with the different stakeholders you listed out for accuracy and insight. Maybe a key step was missed in the process or a stakeholder wasn’t listed. I typically go through 3-5 iterations of the swimlane diagram before it accurately reflects what the current process is.

You’ve Created a Swimlane Diagram, Now What?

Creating an accurate process map is the first step towards identifying inefficiencies to improve a process. On the process map, you can highlight, star, circle, etc. which process steps are wasteful and cause inefficiencies in the process you are mapping out.

I highly suggest working with a cross-functional team to help highlight where the process steps breakdown and cause inefficiencies. Since this is a very collaborative exercise, many people will likely express their grievances as well as suggestions for how to make the process better.

Start an A3 template to help with the problem solving process. Viewing the process with a lens of identifying the 8 wastes is a perfect place to start focusing on improvement opportunities.

Once you and the team you have collaborated on identifying improvement opportunities, brainstorm creative ways to improve the process!

Tips For Creating a Swimlane Diagram

• If you are using a physical space to create a process map, use sticky notes so that it is easy to adjust and move around the sticky notes
• Take an iterative approach with the process map, shop it around with different teams for accuracy, and continue to make updates until it is an accurate representation of the process
• Once the process map is completed, work collaboratively to highlight complex and inefficient process steps for improvement
• Use the process map as a training and onboarding tool for new hires, it will drastically shorten the time to get them up to speed

Tools For Creating Swimlane Diagrams

Use Microsoft Visio if your organization has it readily available. I found that it has the shortest learning curve. See the 5 minute tutorial below to help you get started.

For virtual teams, use a (FREE!!!) collaborative online whiteboard program with Miro.com – see a quick demo video below for building a concept map.

Final Thoughts

Being proficient at creating swimlane diagrams is an invaluable skill that is in high demand by organizations. Illustrating processes from end to end help you understand complex cross-functional processes. Additionally, they also enable you to become a better systematic thinker and problem-solver because you can see how processes span across different departments, teams, stakeholders, etc.  

I highly encourage you to start mapping out a process that is giving you and your team a hard time. Taking the initiative and leadership to map out complex processes will show your commitment to improving your organizations processes. Your co-workers will thank you for making their lives easier!