Swim

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Is the art of the flowchart in danger?

I was passed a flowchart the other week done on an Excel spreadsheet. Nothing wrong with that, I am not snobbish about where diagrams come from. I have knocked a few up in MS Word, Powerpoint  and Excel myself, never mind some of the free options out there. Some on the back of envelopes too, but its best we move on from that.

This one was a bit unwieldy however, it covered the area from A1 to ADD395. You can imagine how I struggled even on a largish display at 1920x1080px. Also, worse even that it had not been cut up into some manageable interconnected portions, there was no use of swim lanes.  These are essential and surely one for morning one of decent 'Introduction to Visio' type courses.

Here's a great example from the Scottish Government MyAccount digital first for local services project.  

Clear use of swimlanes distinguish job sharing and responsibilities for sub-processes of a business process. Each is effectively an interface, human or system. Much like in the great example above.  This style of flowchart differs from others in that processes and decisions are grouped visually by placing them in lanes. Parallel lines (horizontal or vertical), divide the chart into lanes. Each lane is for each person, group or sub-process. Labels show how the chart is organized.

As can be seen, a change of responsibility etc, is clearly seen as a move to another lane. Visio now calls these 'functional bands', although I think that's more of a historical term. Swimlanes are a great technique especially for use in Agile and Lean Six Sigma, for spotting the 'moments of truth'.

Miss out on swim-lanes at your peril!  

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Related Post: Why exactly is social housing a BYOD free zone?
 

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Madonna - Swim.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


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