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Swim Lane Diagrams

Mapping and improving the processes in your organization
Also known as Rummler-Brache Diagrams

When thinking about your organization, have you ever said to yourself that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing? Chances are you have: Despite all the efforts people have made to streamline business operations and flatten organization structures, there are still a great many activities that involve more than one department or team.

Whether you organize your department or teams by function (marketing, accounts, operations), by purpose (for example, corporate customer management) or by any other means, the fact is that a department or team needs to work with other departments or teams.

This means connections, communications and hand-offs between departments and teams. And these create the risk of processing gaps, inefficiencies and duplications, which can contribute to reduced performance or higher costs.

Even well-designed processes and interactions are at risk of inefficiency creeping in: It's a fact of human nature; and so, it's something that needs to be managed. By having a formal method for identifying and integrating processes between departments and teams, you can ensure the connections, communications and hand-offs are well-designed and well managed. One such approach uses "Swim Lane Diagrams," also known as "Rummler-Brache Diagrams."

Swim Lane Diagrams were proposed by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache in their book Improving Processes (1990). This method of diagramming allows you to quickly and easily plot and trace processes and, in particular, the interconnections between processes, departments and teams.

Like other process diagramming techniques, with the Rummler-Brache method, you map...(Sign in to read more.)

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