Mark DyslinHR Project Leader| Xerox Business Services LLCDallas, Tx, United States
When mapping processes, when does it STOP making sense to do a swim lane map? Admit it, swim lanes don't always lend themselves to easy reading. However, if that is the case, then how do you achieve the same type of results: displaying the transfer of process between functions? Saving Changes...
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Peter WrightProgramme Manager| BAE SystemsSouthport, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Mark,
in my experience [where we ended up with a swimlane process that was so large, A0 per sheet, we covered a board room walls with it!] you are either entering in too much low level detail or your process is in-efficient.
However if you exclude detail you may introduce risk by people assuming what a high level function box contains/means; you may then end up with lots of call out boxes to explain.
I have found this to be a particular issue in medium to large enterprises which have a large number business units (Finance, Commercial, IT/IS, Technology, Development, Release/Ops, engineering, support, product and business ops to name a few) and therefore you end up with larger swim lanes. Both in size and complexity as processes transfer between departments and more decision/function points are introduced. If your process is trversing too many of these departments then it most likely will not be an efficient process and therefore should be challenged.
When you are reaching this level you then need to consider lower flow chart process development andif possible supported by a very high level swim lane as mentioned earlier.
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Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Mark, you should stop when you see that your process maps starts to look like a Picasso's art. One quick way is to use color coding for the elements (or shapes) in your process map. So when you see a color change, you will know that there is a transfer between functions. Do remember to add the legend for the colors to indicate the respective functions. Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Here is an idea, STOP USING SWIM LANE diagrams. There are much more long-lived modeling techniques that keep you at the right level of detail and provide a structure for identifying transformation anomalies, performing failure analysis, identifying explicit and implied IT application requirements, developing data models, and more.
I have attached free book in PDF format that takes you through the tools, step-by-step. Saving Changes...
