If you're like me, you can appreciate the elegance and beauty of a clean flowchart. That is, of course, unless you're work of art has been corrupted by that notorious friend of management called "Swim Lanes".
Swim Lanes - also christened "Cross-Functional Flowcharts" by some unknown egghead - are horizontal lanes drawn across a flowchart that denote what functional entity (person, organization, system, etc.) owns the action being described by the flowchart blocks within that same lane.
For example, you may have a swim lane labelled "customers" and a flowchart symbol inside of that swim lane that is labelled "Complete Online Application", denoting that the action of completing the online application is performed/owned by customers.
This all sounds great in theory, until you review a flowchart that has been ruined by this flury of colored bands. I say that if you need to know who is performing an action on the flowchart, place the information into the description. Is it really that hard to say "Customer Completes Online Application"? Do we really need these ugly bars to tell me this?
Whew! That felt good.
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