Swim Lane Diagram with Data

This swim lane diagram is a fundamental tool to any transactional process improvement. It allows you to visualize the process, understand the current state, and enables you to visualize a complex transactional process covering multiple roles and departments. The insights that you will gain while building this diagram as a team can be exceptionally meaningful.

This swim lane diagram will help you to:

• Clarify the process sequence

• Capture process relevant data

• Show the interrelationship of various steps in the process

• Help identify deviations between the actual process and the intended process

• Help isolate where in the process the problems are most likely to occur

• Visually demonstrate the number of hand-offs between roles and/or departments

When evaluating your process document the current way things are actually done, not the ideal, to identify problems. This is accomplished by going to the actual place where the work is done and observing the actual work while talking to the individuals who perform the tasks. Do not take for granted that you know what happens. It is always important to go and see.