Swimlanes - separate tasks using columns AND horizontal themes

Robert MacGregor

The problem

Our project boards become crowded with tasks and are difficult to view. Our projects become sophisticated and have tasks with multiple themes that would benefit from visual segregation.

Why this is important

Visualising project work unifies a team and speeds work execution. Even a modest increase in project complexity can result in a crowded project visualisation that's difficult to work with because focus and context are obscured.

Adding swimlanes permits task segregation according to a theme, aiding our team's comprehension of their work and encouraging insights into workflow.

Workarounds

Tags - tags are useful but don't reduce visual clutter on the project board.

Separate projects for different themes - we tried this. We lose work context because we'd like to see all our work on the same project board/visualisation.

Examples of swimlanes

Although this is literal and cartoonish it conveys the swimlane concept. Horizontal swimlanes for each swimmer; Ben, Courtney and Marek.

Examples of swimlanes based on different themes

https://businessmap.io/kanban-resources/kanban-software/kanban-swimlanes

More examples

https://www.planview.com/resources/guide/kanban-project-management-virtual-teams/kanban-board-examples/

https://kanbantool.com/support/kanban-board/what-are-swimlanes

Joerg Koper

Hi @Robert MacGregor 👋🙂

I think your idea is very exciting in principle, because that would be a cool feature.

However, Swimlanes would interfere deeply with the existing board architecture of MeisterTask, because they add an additional dimension to the classic column logic. This would mean that almost all existing features – from automations to integrations – would have to be adapted. 🤔

I am very curious to see what the development team's ideas are on this.

My counter-proposal:

You can already achieve the same effect with the filter function and tags. Simply insert the desired tag (e.g. name, project or department) into the task and then use the filters – and you'll have a clear structure without having to completely reprogram MeisterTask. ☺️

Best, Joerg

Robert MacGregor

Joerg,

Thank-you for replying; you raised interesting points.

>You can already achieve the same effect with the filter function and tags.

I did try this, and I agree with you, using existing functionality is a better option. Unfortunately visual clutter and lack of context still occurred so swimlanes or some other solution is needed.

>However, Swimlanes would interfere deeply with the existing board architecture of MeisterTask,

You have the advantage over me regarding Meister Task's architecture because I don't know anything about it; is it documented somewhere I could read about it?