How do Swimlanes Work?

This is a blank swimlane - this is bad - it doesn't tell us anything about the person or place or object. This will be difficult for other people on the team or for your future self to understand what this is and how it pertains to your diagram

Here is the base minimum that we require for a swimlane.

This is just a name - this might be okay for a small diagram where there is little room for confusion, such as "Warehouse #66" or "Michael Bolton" but once you get more than about three swimlanes you'll want to be more specific with your information, not just to help you, but other people on your team.

Here we have a swimlane that has a name and a title - this can be something like:

Name: Jaden Solo
Title: CEO

or

Name: Michael Scott
Title: Scranton Regional Manager

This is just an "okay" swimlane, it tells us something, but not everything...

This swimlane has all text fields completed, we have a name, title, and label. A label might be a place, like a "warehouse" or a group like "10-99 contractors"

With all three text fields with input it should be very easy to see who and what is happening in your process

Here, not only do we have all swimlane fields completed, but we also have assigned a color to coordinate and contrast with other swimlanes.

Add in color (or Hex Value as some call it) will allow you to quickly group together swimlanes and it visually makes it easier to follow on more complex or large diagrams

This swimlane not only has all the fields filled in and completed, but we also see that we've added a monetary value and chose the currency giving a complete run-down of this swimlane and what is does and doesn't do. 

Here are some examples of different swimlanes, try looking through them and editing them to get a better feel for how they work

Feel free to add in nodes and lines and play around with the concept