What does swim lanes help to identify in a process?

Swim lanes are used in process mapping to clearly delineate responsibilities and roles across different departments or individuals involved in a process. Each lane represents a specific actor or team, visually organizing the tasks and activities they are responsible for. This method helps to identify hand-offs, which are the points in a process where the responsibility for a task transitions from one actor to another.

By clearly marking these transitions, swim lanes reveal how work flows through the process and highlight where interactions occur. This is crucial for understanding process efficiency, as it can pinpoint areas where delays, misunderstandings, or additional coordination may be needed between roles. Recognizing these hand-offs allows businesses to streamline operations and improve communication.

While workload distribution, time management, and cost reduction are important components of process improvement, they do not specifically focus on the segregation of responsibilities and transitions between different stakeholders, which is the primary purpose of swim lanes.