Free diagram maker
Swimlane diagram maker
A swimlane diagram is a flowchart that also answers the question a flowchart leaves out: who does this step. Each lane belongs to a person, a team or a system, and a step sits in the lane of whoever owns it.
Free, no account, and nothing you draw is uploaded.
Published . By the DiagramDesk team.
The value shows up the moment a process crosses lanes. Every arrow that leaves one lane and enters another is a hand-off, and hand-offs are where work waits.
Laying out the lanes
- Open the template. It has three lanes with a process already running across them.
- Rename each lane by double-clicking its heading band.
- Add a lane by copying an existing one with Ctrl+D and dragging it into place.
- Put every step in the lane of whoever does it, not whoever asked for it.
- Follow the arrows that cross lanes. Each one is a hand-off worth questioning.
- Export a PDF for a procedure document, or a PNG for a slide.
How to lay one out
- Lanes go across or down
- Vertical lanes suit a process with many short steps. Horizontal lanes suit a long process with few actors.
- One owner per lane
- If a lane is called “Operations and Finance”, it is two lanes.
- Count the crossings
- A process that crosses lanes eight times is usually slower than one that crosses twice, whatever the step count says.
- Put the customer first
- If a customer or requester triggers the process, give them the first lane so the diagram reads in the order things happen.
Swimlane diagram or plain flowchart?
A plain flowchart shows what happens. A swimlane diagram shows what happens and who does it, by putting each person, team or system in its own horizontal band. The test is whether the process crosses hands: if every step belongs to one team, the lanes add nothing but width.
When a process does cross hands, the lanes show the one thing a flowchart hides, the hand-offs. Every arrow that crosses a lane boundary is a point where work waits for someone else, and counting those crossings is often the quickest way to see why a process is slow.
When lanes make the difference
- Showing where a process stalls between two departments
- Writing a procedure where responsibility matters as much as order
- Handover documents, audits and ISO-style process records
- Comparing how a process runs today with how it should run
Ready to draw yours?
The example above opens in the editor, so you can edit rather than start cold.
Swimlane questions
What is the difference between a swimlane and a pool?
In BPMN a pool is a whole participant, such as a company, and lanes divide it internally. In everyday use the words get swapped freely, and either reading works here.
Can lanes be different widths?
Yes. Select a lane and drag its handles, or set an exact width in the right-hand panel.
Do shapes stay inside a lane when I move it?
Not automatically. Select the lane and the shapes in it together, then move them as one, or group them with Ctrl+G.
Can I draw this in BPMN notation?
Yes, and there is a BPMN template with events, tasks and gateways already set up.