How to make a swimlane diagram
A swimlane diagram is a flowchart split into lanes, one per person, team or system. It shows not just what happens but who is responsible, which makes hand-offs and delays easy to see.
Choose your lanes
Make one lane for each role that takes part, such as Customer, Sales and Warehouse. Keep it to five or six lanes; beyond that the diagram becomes hard to read.
Draw the lanes in NodeFlow
- Draw a wide rectangle for each lane and stack them one above the other.
- Give each lane a label, either as its text or as a text box at the left end.
- Select the lanes and choose Edit, Lock / unlock selection. A locked lane cannot be dragged by accident: pressing on empty space inside it moves the canvas instead, while the steps on top stay fully editable.
- Use Align and Distribute from the Arrange menu to line the lanes up and space them evenly.
Place the steps
Put each step inside the lane of whoever does it, and run time from left to right. Connect the steps in order; every arrow that crosses from one lane to another is a hand-off, and those are the places where delays and mistakes tend to happen.
What to look for afterwards
- Steps that bounce back and forth between the same two lanes.
- Long gaps between a hand-off and the next step.
- Lanes with almost nothing to do, or far too much.