Make a Swimlane Timeline
A swimlane timeline splits a plan into horizontal lanes, one for each team, person or workstream, and lays every lane against the same dates. Reading across a lane shows what one group is doing. Reading down the page shows what everyone is doing at the same moment, which is where handoffs, bottlenecks and double-booked people show up.
They are common in project plans, product launches, marketing plans, event planning and any schedule where several groups work in parallel.
1. Decide what each lane stands for
Pick one way of dividing the work and stick to it. Lanes by team (Design, Engineering, Marketing), by person, or by workstream all work, but mixing them makes the same task belong to two lanes. Three to seven lanes is usually as many as a reader can follow on one page.
2. List the tasks in each lane
Give every task a start date and an end date, even if the end date is a guess. A task with both dates is drawn as a bar, and the bar lengths are what make the lanes comparable. Single-day items such as a review meeting or a launch day can have a start date only.
3. Mark the shared deadlines
Some dates matter to every lane: a launch, a board meeting, the end of a quarter. Those belong on the timeline as milestones, so every lane can see how its work lines up against them.
Building one in Preceden
In Preceden, each lane is a layer. Layers sit one above another on a single date axis, so tasks in different lanes that happen at the same time line up.
When you create a timeline, the Multiple Layers layout starts you with three layers, each with its name on the left, which is already the swimlane look. The Gantt Chart layout starts with two layers and lists each task's name on the left as well. Either way, click the Add Layer button above the timeline to add a lane, and rename a layer by clicking its name on the timeline or in the list below it.
When you add an event, choose its lane from the Layer menu. Then fill in the details that matter in a plan:
- End Date turns the event into a bar that shows how long the task runs.
- Dependent, above the Start Date field, makes a task start when another one ends, even when the two sit in different lanes. Its dates then move on their own if the earlier task slips. See Make an Event Start When Another Event Ends.
- Percent Complete, under More Options, shades in how much of the bar is done.
- Make this event a milestone, also under More Options, draws the event as a vertical line through every lane. Use it for the shared deadlines from step 3.
Make the lanes easy to read
- Give each layer its own color with the Color field when you add or edit it. Then click Appearance, open Colors, and check both Apply the layer color to the layer's background and Override event color with the layer color, so each lane is a colored band.
- Under Appearance > Layers, set Layer Name Position to Left of the layer if your layout does not already put the names there.
- If you want one task per row with its name listed down the left, check Use Gantt chart layout in the same section. Creating Gantt Charts with Preceden covers what changes when you do.
- Reorder the layers so lanes that hand work to each other sit next to each other.
To focus on a few lanes while you work, collapse the others. Exports and shared links still show every layer.
Working on it with others
On a Pro plan you can invite collaborators to the timeline, so each lane's owner can keep their own tasks up to date. When the plan is ready, export it as a PDF for a meeting or share a link so people can look it over online.
If your lanes are different subjects rather than different teams, such as two countries or two people's lives, Make a Comparative Timeline covers that kind of layered timeline.