+ the Swimlane Methodology for Project Success

Overview

Swimming is one discipline that you cannot power your way through. It takes energy and mixture of preparation, planning, adaptability, skill, consistency, and perseverance. Most importantly, it takes time and practice to work on your techniques (e.g., arms, legs, breathing and building up your endurance). Becoming a good PM is much like the swim portion (2.4 mile) of an Ironman – it doesn’t happen overnight, and simply having the title of PM bestowed upon you does not make you proficiently ready to manage a project. Nor does taking a project management course or finagling your way through the PMP test ready you to take on the true complexities of being a PM.

Comparing Project Management and Learning to Swim

1. Initial Fear and Uncertainty:

• Swimming: When learning to swim, many people experience initial fear and hesitation to get into the water.
• Project Management: Similarly, starting a new project can be daunting, especially when dealing with unfamiliar tasks or responsibilities.

2. Learning the Basics:

• Swimming: You start with basic techniques like floating, kicking, and breathing.
• Project Management: In project management, you begin with foundational skills such as setting goals, planning, and understanding the project’s scope.

3. Gradual Progress:

• Swimming: As you practice, you gradually move from shallow to deeper waters, improving your technique and confidence.
• Project Management: Projects also progress in phases, from planning to execution and monitoring, gaining momentum and clarity as you go.

4. Overcoming Challenges:

• Swimming: Swimmers often face challenges like staying afloat, dealing with waves, and refining their strokes.
• Project Management: In project management, challenges include managing resources, meeting deadlines, and handling unexpected issues.

5. Seeking Guidance:

• Swimming: Beginners benefit from the guidance of instructors or experienced swimmers.
• Project Management: Project managers often seek advice from mentors and colleagues or utilize project management tools and methodologies.

6. Celebrating Milestones:

• Swimming: Each achievement in swimming, like completing a lap or mastering a stroke, is a cause for celebration.
• Project Management: Similarly, reaching project milestones, completing tasks, and achieving goals are celebrated as progress.

7. Continuous Improvement:

• Swimming: Swimmers continually work on improving their skills and techniques.
• Project Management: Effective project managers consistently look for ways to optimize processes, enhance productivity, and deliver better results.

8. Teamwork:

• Swimming: In team swimming or relay races, collaboration and coordination with teammates are crucial.
• Project Management: Project management often involves working with a team, ensuring effective communication, collaboration, and coordination to achieve project success.

Like swimming, project management is a journey of learning, growth, and continuous improvement. Embracing the process and developing resilience are key in both endeavors!

Swimlanes

A swimlane in project management is a type of visual diagram that divides work (e.g., sales order process or engineering workflow) into several lanes. Each lane is assigned to individuals, teams, departments, or roles. The work in each lane is broken down into the specific steps that need to be done by the people assigned to the lanes. For those used to Gantt chart tools (e.g., defining format and styles), swim lanes are a great way to introduce project phases or classification of tasks to the project team.

Swimlane diagrams offer several benefits for cross-functional processes, such as providing an overview of the process, aligning expectations and goals, identifying, and eliminating steps, and optimizing the process flow. All this makes it easier for stakeholders to understand how different roles, departments, or individuals contribute to the overall process.

Using swimlane diagrams can help you in the following ways:

• Boost clarity – The visualization of individual and team responsibilities helps to reduce confusion and redundancy across departments and divisions within your organization.
• Increased understanding of processes – This can help you see potential bottlenecks, inefficiencies, redundancies, and other areas needing improvement.
• Strengthened communication – This increased communication makes it easier to keep everybody involved aligned and focused on the same goals.
• Improved change management – You can always expect that there will be changes. These diagrams will help you determine and communicate the impact a change might have on various teams and individuals involved in the project. That way, you can plan to implement change with minimal impact.
• Increased collaborations – Everybody involved can analyze process flow, make suggestions for improvement, and work together to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
• Improved documentation – If it’s not documented in the diagram, then it doesn’t belong in the project. You can use these “truth” documents during reviews and audits, and when hiring new employees to aid in orientation and training.

Summary

Both project management and learning to swim involve overcoming initial fears, mastering basic techniques, gradual progress, overcoming challenges, seeking guidance, celebrating milestones, continuous improvement, and teamwork. Just like a swimmer develops confidence and skills over time, a project manager navigates projects with increasing expertise and efficiency, ensuring effective collaboration and achievement of goals along the way. The entire learning process of swimming helped me to be a better PM when it came to “steering the ship” in managing projects.

Turn your project into a winning relay – plan, adapt, and swim toward success! – Ron Smith

Your feedback is always welcome here in the comments, and in the Community Discussion Forum!