Picture two Olympic swimmers racing side by side in a massive indoor pool. Both execute the same strokes, pushing through the water equally. But despite their mirrored movements, their ultimate goal—winning the race—defines their competition.
This concept translates directly to Kanban swimlanes, a visual tool that adds structure to a Kanban board and helps teams manage complex workflows clearly.
A kanban board visually represents a company’s workflow, typically using vertical columns to show the different stages of a project. Swimlanes add another layer of organization by dividing these columns into horizontal sections, categorizing tasks based on teams, priorities, or project goals. By implementing Kanban swimlanes, teams gain better visibility, streamlined workplace collaboration, and improved efficiency—all essential for keeping projects on track. Whether you’re managing software development, marketing campaigns, or customer support, swimlanes help cut through the chaos and keep work flowing smoothly.
What are Kanban swimlanes?
Kanban swimlanes are horizontal sections on a Kanban board that help categorize and segment different workflows, tasks, or projects. Each swimlane represents a separate work stream, allowing teams to distinguish between different work types within the same board. These lanes improve organization, facilitate task prioritization, and offer a clearer visual representation of workloads.
Swimlanes are particularly useful in managing complex projects, handling cross-functional team workflows, and separating recurring tasks from more strategic work. They allow teams to work simultaneously on multiple projects while maintaining clarity and efficiency.
Relationship between Kanban boards and swimlanes
A Kanban board provides a structured way to visualize workflow stages, helping teams track task progress from start to completion. The board typically consists of vertical columns representing different task statuses, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Completed.”
Swimlanes complement kanban boards by adding a horizontal segmentation layer. While kanban columns define the workflow stages, swimlanes categorize tasks based on specific criteria, such as team members, clients, or priority levels. This combination creates a comprehensive system that enhances organization and efficiency.
How to add swimlanes to your kanban board
To use kanban swimlanes, you must construct and integrate a kanban board into your team’s workflow to use kanban swimlanes. What goes on the kanban board depends on the scope of your project or team. However, most will consist of each task or goal you wish to complete, grouped by status.
Statuses can be simple, like “in progress” and “completed,” or they can be more complex.
Once you decide which tasks will appear on your board, you have to choose between a physical board and a digital one. Physical boards consist of cards or sticky notes with each task or goal. You place them manually into the appropriate category on a corkboard or other surface.
Digital boards, however, can make things a little easier with automated data entry — which you can get with services like Jotform’s Form Builder and templates. Integrate with productivity software like Asana or Trello, or use Jotform Tables to create a digital kanban board.
No matter which direction you take, you can apply kanban swimlanes to categories that feature similar tasks. For instance, a common Kanban swimlane may include client onboarding if you offer multiple levels of the same service. By congregating these tasks on the same level as a kanban board, your team can see the difference in progress between various clients.
Types of kanban swimlanes
Kanban swimlanes are versatile project management tools with many functions that can help your team. Here are some examples to get you started.
Swimlanes for individual projects, teams, or clients
If your organization handles multiple projects, teams, or clients simultaneously, kanban swimlanes can help separate and manage their respective workflows. This ensures that tasks are organized based on different objectives while still visible on a single Kanban board.
Example use case:
- A marketing agency working with multiple clients can create separate swimlanes for each client, ensuring that every task related to a specific client remains in its dedicated section. This prevents confusion and helps managers track progress efficiently.
- A software development team might use swimlanes for different product features, each with its own workflow. This helps developers and project managers track each feature’s development lifecycle separately.
By using swimlanes in this way, managers can easily compare workflows, spot inconsistencies, and address bottlenecks before they disrupt progress.
Swimlanes to tackle recurring tasks
Many teams deal with a mix of one-time tasks and repetitive tasks that occur regularly. By setting up a dedicated swimlane for recurring tasks, teams can separate ongoing work from ad-hoc assignments, making managing and prioritizing workloads easier.
Example use case:
- A content creation team may have a swimlane specifically for recurring social media posts, blog updates, or newsletters that need to be published weekly or monthly.
- An IT support team might use a swimlane for standard maintenance tasks like software updates or security audits, keeping them distinct from urgent troubleshooting requests.
By visually differentiating recurring tasks, teams can prevent workflow clutter and maintain focus on high-priority assignments.
Swimlanes that categorize classes of service
Some projects require tasks to be prioritized based on their urgency or importance. By using Kanban swimlanes to define different classes of service, teams can quickly identify high-priority tasks and allocate resources accordingly.
Example use case:
- A customer support team might have swimlanes labeled “Expedited,” “Standard,” and “Low Priority” to categorize tickets based on urgency. This ensures that critical customer issues receive immediate attention while less urgent inquiries are handled appropriately.
- A software development team managing bug fixes might create swimlanes for “Critical Issues,” “High Priority Fixes,” and “Routine Maintenance” to ensure that the most pressing problems are addressed first.
This method helps teams maintain a clear hierarchy of priorities, ensuring that urgent tasks are prioritized and don’t get lost among routine work.
Swimlanes that collect unused ideas
Not every idea or task is ready for immediate execution, but that doesn’t mean it should be discarded entirely. A dedicated swimlane for unused or pending ideas allows teams to store potential projects or concepts in an easily accessible location without cluttering active workflows.
Example use case:
- A product development team may have a swimlane labeled “Feature Requests,” where they collect suggestions from users and internal teams. They can revisit this swimlane to evaluate which ideas should be implemented when planning future updates.
- A marketing team might maintain a “Campaign Concepts” swimlane to store creative ideas that aren’t currently in use but could be revisited later when the timing is right.
This approach ensures that valuable ideas remain visible and accessible without overwhelming the primary workflow.
How to collect data for swimlanes
Any company or team looking to add swimlanes to their Kanban board will come across the same issue: Collecting information for these productivity tools takes time and effort. To make your swimlanes and Kanban board as efficient as possible, data collection must be quick and easy for your team.
Productivity software that includes Kanban functionality has become more popular in the era of remote work. You can supplement these boards with automatic data collection by using a tool like Jotform’s Assign Forms feature. This allows you to automatically deliver premade forms to assigned team members at a dedicated time or interval. All they have to do is input their data and submit the form.
The data submitted through forms will automatically populate the associated table in Jotform Tables. Just switch to Kanban view, and you’re all set with your board. You can then use one of the many available Kanban software tools to create swimlanes for your board.
If your team could use a push into the realm of more productive work, there’s no better time than now to take a dip into Kanban swimlanes.
If your team could use a push into the realm of more productive work, there’s no better time than now to take a dip into kanban swimlanes.
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