BPMN - Abstraction level for swimlanes?

[zigenz]

Hi all,

Yes, in true n00b fashion, I am hammering the msg board.  

My team has just started on our first attempt at modelling a portion of system using swimlanes - it's been an interesting process to say the least.

From my (very) brief experience to this point, I get the feeling that at the highest level of abstraction, swimlanes are not necessarily appropriate - in fact they complicate the modelling significantly.  I've found that they're more useful when the granularity of the detail that applies to the activities is reasonably fine.

Is this a fair observation, or do the gurus out there suspect I have some fundamental error in my approach?

Z

[thomaskilian]

Well, swimlanes are eye-candy (somehow). To the modeler they do not bring much added value - they are just lines on a diagram. You have to fiddle around quite much as the objects are not connected to the lanes in any way. It's just graphics. However, to the business people they add value as things can be shown more clearly. So it's sometimes worth while to spend the time (as you need to "Powerpoint" your presentation - gasp!). I would make more use of swimlanes if objects were aware of the swimlanes and vice versa. That is: moving swimlanes would also move the objects in- and outside accordingly.

My 0.02€