{"id":565,"date":"2018-05-18T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T07:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/?p=565"},"modified":"2023-03-15T20:32:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T18:32:47","slug":"kanban-swimlanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/kanban-swimlanes\/","title":{"rendered":"Improve Task Organization: Kanban Swimlanes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Teams turn to the Kanban Method<\/a> to streamline workflows and improve process efficiency. With large teams and complex projects, however, a common issue occurs \u2013 the Kanban board becomes cluttered and hard to read. Kanban swimlanes are used to tame this visual clutter and improve task organization.<\/p>\n

What are Kanban swimlanes?<\/h2>\n

In large projects, different team members often need to focus on different work items. Your developers and your customer service aren\u2019t going to have any overlap, and your team members in London probably have quite different tasks to deal with than your team in New York. When the whole team is reading from the same board, having every task displayed makes it harder for your team to identify their next step.<\/p>\n

Kanban swimlanes divide the board horizontally, representing parts of the process that run in parallel: tasks in one lane should not depend on tasks from other lanes, and tasks should not move from one swimlane to another. For example, Development and Testing should not be different swimlanes, as Development work items will then pass to Testing.<\/p>\n

Swimlanes were added to the method early on in the history of Kanban<\/a>. They let members of large teams know exactly what their role is \u2013 without being overwhelmed by a cluttered and complex Kanban board.<\/p>\n

\"Kanban<\/a><\/p>\n

Swimlane Categories<\/h2>\n

The categories for your Kanban swimlanes can be as varied as your projects \u2013 we\u2019ll go over the most common ones here:<\/p>\n