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Help Your Team Swim in Sync with Swim Lane Maps
| by Dan Davison |
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| Posted in Business Improvement Services, Customer Quality, Strategy Tags: process improvement, Process Maps, Swim Lane | |||||
Last week I took you along on a family vacation to the Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan near Muskegon. Yes, we got there. But it was a longer journey than it needed to be. We could have spent less time travelling, and more time vacationing in the cool climes of Lake Michigan. Responsibilities between driver and navigator could have been more clearly delineated. The hand-offs could have been better communicated to cut down on some of the indecision and waiting that occurred. Sounds good but, So how do you do that?
This swim lane process map shows the passenger (customer) in the first lane. Their role is mostly to ask questions. In the second lane, the driver accepts requests for breaks from passengers, and route adjustments from the navigator, who is shown in the third row.
Asking, ‘how are we going to get from where we are to where we want to be,” is a question of implementation. What are the concrete steps we have to take to get there? Who is going to do what, and when are they going to do it?
Using Swim Lane process maps is one way to answer some of these questions. We like to organize Swim Lane process maps by putting the ‘START’ on the left and the ‘END’ on the right. It’s easier to read the chart from left to right. Organizing the Swim Lane map and other process maps in predictable ways, and not over-stuffing your maps with information eases communications, which is mainly why you create process maps: to communicate to others a process that you already know.
What’s In A Swim Lane?
Swim Lane Diagrams, as described in part I of our series on process maps, organize tasks by role. A role gets a swim lane. You are responsible for every task, document or decision shown in your Swim Lane. The chart above shows three swim lanes: Passenger, Driver, and Navigator. In our swim lane maps, we always show the customer on top. Arguably, my daughters in the back seat are the customers of the ‘drive home from camp’ process. If it wasn’t for the customer, my wife and I might be in Cape Cod, or Colorado, or France. But we wouldn’t be in the minivan in Michigan. To determine who goes in the top lane of your Swim Lane map, use the “but for” test. ‘But for my daughters, I would not be driving five hundred miles north to a very small town in Michigan. The process would not be taking place.
How Swim Lane Maps Help
What really stands out in this Swim Lane map is that Driving and Navigation are in fact different roles. Had we consulted a Swim Lane map before our trip, we would have clearly seen that the driver should not be attempting to navigate, no more than the navigator should be grabbing the wheel and driving. The roles are clearly distinct. Swim Lane Maps visually communicate how the roles relate to and communicate with one another.
Swim Lane Maps keep you within the bounds of your role while defining hand-offs of control and information.
Customer Involvement Shows Up In A Swim Lane Map
Swim Lane Maps visually communicate the involvement of each role, the Customer role for example. As in the example above from my family road trip, my daughters asks of the process, ‘are we there yet?’ and interrupts the process when it is, ‘time for a break.’ But my daughters are passengers, and not responsible for any process steps (rectangular boxes). In simple processes, customers may provide information at the beginning of a process in the form of requirements, and at the end when they buy the product. In more complex products, customer requirements may be injected more frequently. In the case of co-development or co-creation of products, customers may have responsibility for processes and therefore process steps would appear in their swim lanes.
ISO-certified organizations must gather requirements from customers. That could be shown as a requirements document which is depicted in a process map as a process step box with a wavy bottom. Customer requirements could also stand alone in separate requirements-definition process.
In a Swim Lane Map, hand-offs of control and information appear as vertical lines or arrows originating from an activity in one role and connecting to an activity in another. When my daughter asks ‘Are we there yet’ it shows up as a vertical line leading from a decision point. The answer produces different actions, which is another indicator that this role is a customer.
Bizmanualz has been at the forefront of deploying business best practices since 1995 delivering Policies, Procedures and Forms; quality systems implementation; and strategic business process improvement to help business owners achieve the growth and expansion they envision.
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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Help Your Team Swim in Sync with Swim Lane Maps. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com
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