5.4.2. Swim lanes

As an alternative to filtering based on properties, cards can be grouped in rows called “swim lanes” due to their visual appearance. These can reflect team members, projects, topics, or categories of Elements, for example. The advantage compared to filtering is that swim lanes allow for a visual overview. They are equally useful where you cannot use filters, like on a physical Kanban board, or want to break up the board by topic, you might want to use swim lanes: they can represent people, projects, or categories of Elements.

Story

Breaking down complexity

Fiona and Gabriel meet in the kitchen by chance, both having an acute need for caffeine. Their Agile efforts take some additional concentration on top of their work, but they’re both clear they would not want to miss it. But besides that, there’s something else they notice; they have never included Oliver in their discussions, except that they’ve initially used his office and then once given him a Task and card but without much explanation. Somehow that does not feel right, as he’s a valued member of the team. They briefly think about how they could address it and decide to be very frank: they have not thought about this earlier and rather bring him in later than not at all. They’ll suggest having a joint lunch during which they’ll explain their journey and findings so far and will include him in their further Agile endeavours.

But there’s something else their first experiments with the Kanban board have shown them. It quickly gets hard to keep an overview in the “To Do”, “In Progress” and “Wait” columns. They’ll need to figure out a better way—maybe one of the books will give a hint. But first, they want to apologize to Oliver for not having involved him.

As they enter his office, they find his desk empty and decide to come back later but to their surprise, leaving the room, they notice what they have overlooked on their way in: Oliver was standing quietly at the Kanban board, which was temporarily placed at a side in the open space in front of his office. They quickly approach him and note that it’s a perfect coincidence as they wanted to discuss their Agile process with him. After telling their story, Oliver accepts their apology and comments that he is interested to get started. Without much thought, Fiona mentions that she really wants to address the clutter on the board and will dive into the books. Pragmatic as he is, Oliver suggests just adding lines across the columns in which the cards are assigned to people. Not knowing about the swim lanes concept, he has nevertheless described it. Agile is, in fact, a quite pragmatic approach to breaking down complexity.