Lanes define a clear path to reach your destination. In Agile, swimlane is one such concept that sets a simple and clear process of the work that you do.
The concept of swimlane can be related to the pool, where the swimmers gather in their respective lanes to start off. Similar to the pool, work items are grouped in different categories. Each category is referred as a lane and is displayed in horizontal format. Swimlanes are effective in categorizing the work items with respective to specific sectors in your business.
Why swimlanes are displayed on the scrum board?
Well, board is the place where the actual work starts. You move the work items across the statuses to track its progress. Using swimlanes, the team can categorize as well as track the work items in parallel. By tracking their status, you can easily identify bottlenecks and find ways to help your team complete the work items on time.
Example:
If you want to work only on the high priority items, you can select the Priority Swimlane and start moving the items across the statuses. Here,
X axis
represents
Swimlanes
and
Y axis
denotes
Statuses
. You can easily track the work items that are listed in high priority and their respective statuses.