How to Create a Swimlane Diagram in Confluence & Jira (and Why)

[#1]

What Is a Swimlane Diagram? 🏊

Swimlanes (aka functional bands, multi-column charts, or Rummler-Brache diagrams) illustrate how processes involving multiple contributors progress through their various chronological stages. That may sound complicated, but in practice swimlanes and swimlane diagrams are an elegant way to un-complicate diagrams that would otherwise be overly complex.

In a swimlane diagram, processes are split into distinct channels according to whose responsibility they are. This allows each person (or group of people, such as a business department) to quickly and easily see what they’re required to accomplish. Because the lanes are arranged side-by-side, events in the process can be organized in sequence and connected by arrows, so multiple processes come together to form a whole.

This format helps teams to see what their team and the other teams need to accomplish (and when), so processes don’t stagnate.

Swimlane Diagram Examples

Most often, swimlane diagrams get used by multi-department organizations to illustrate cooperative business processes. In our example below, notice we’ve organized the lanes horizontally instead of vertically and bumped the number of lanes up to four.

You can use as many lanes as your process demands and orient the diagram whichever way makes the most sense for your situation.

What makes a swimlane diagram a swimlane diagram is:

a) the separation of processes into lanes—either horizontally or vertically—and;

b) organizing discrete tasks in sequential order along the other axis.

Doing both these things allows the diagram to provide viewers with the most benefit. Each department can see its assigned tasks broken out into a distinct channel and everyone can see at what stage of the entire process their tasks need to be tackled.

How to Create a Swimlane Diagram in Gliffy for Confluence & Jira

Here's how you make a swimlane diagram using Gliffy.

1) Look in the Shape Library along the left side of your canvas for the Swimlane sub-section. If Swimlane shapes aren't there, you'll need to add them by clicking More Shapes at the bottom of the Shape Library, expanding the Basic and Flowchart section and ticking the Swim Lanes box.

2) Drag the swimlane shape that best suits your needs onto your canvas. By selecting the shape, you can change its total size, the size of individual lanes, or the shape’s orientation.

• To add / subtract lanes, select the swimlane shape by clicking on it then click the edit custom properties icon in the popup menu bar. From here you’ll be able to set the number of lanes from 1 to 12.
• Pro tip: set your desired lane size first, as any new lanes you add will automatically match your existing lanes.

3) Once your swimlane shape is ready, use the Flowchart section of the Shape Library to fill out your diagram with process events and connect those events with arrows.

Use a Swimlane Diagram Template in Gliffy

To get started even more quickly, use one of Gliffy’s existing swimlane templates by clicking File / New and browsing through our template gallery—or just use either of the diagrams in this post as a template.

Just keep swimming 😉

❤️ The Gliffy Diagram Team

[Olivier van der Drift]

How can I change the width of an individual swimming lane? I want one of the swimming lanes wider than the others.

[Olivier van der Drift]

Found the answer myself. When the swimming lane diagram is selected you can change the width of all lanes individually by dragging the blue dots. The blue dots are halfway the height so if your diagram has considerable height you might have to scroll down to find them. At least that's what I missed before.