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excella.com | @excellaco
Measuring Flow:
Metrics that Matter
Julie Wyman & Hunter Tammaro

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excella.com | @excellaco
Agenda
• Why is flow
so important?
• How do we
measure flow?
• Practice!

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Utilization vs. Flow
What’s the difference?

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Prioritizing
Utilization
Fully utilized, but spend
most of the time waiting
Slow flow through
the system
Slow to respond to change

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Prioritizing
Flow
Work almost always moving
Rapid flow through
the system
Short response time reduces
effect of impediments

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excella.com | @excellaco
Measuring Flow

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Throughput
How many items in a given period of time?

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What it measures
What:
Number of work items
completed in a given
length of time
Why:
Predict how long to complete
a given set of work
Get a sense of team stability0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
#ofWorkItemsCompleted
Week

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Comparison to Velocity
Similarities
• Team delivery
over time
• Provides predictability
Differences
• Independent of work
item size
• Not tied to a sprint
• Simplicity of collection

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Lead and Cycle Time
How long from start to finish?

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What it measures
Backlog Ready Develop Validate Done
Doing Done
Cycle
Time
Lead
Time

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How to collect
Backlog Ready Develop Validate Done
Doing Done
Cycle
Time

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Average Cycle Time
What:
The arithmetic mean
(adding a group of numbers
and dividing by the count of
those numbers)
Why:
Helps visualize trends
and provides data for
predicting delivery
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
1 2 3 4 5
CycleTime(days)
Sprint

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Average Cycle Time
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1 2 3 4 5
CycleTime(days)
Sprint
Stories Bugs Overall
What:
The arithmetic mean
(adding a group of numbers
and dividing by the count of
those numbers)
Why:
Helps visualize trends
and provides data for
predicting delivery

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Cycle Time Distribution
What:
Shows how
often each cycle
time occurs
Why:
Differentiate
between trends
and outliers0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
#ofoccurrences
(oftheparticularcycletime)
Cycle Time (days)
85% clear rate
95% clear rate

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Use in Scrum & Kanban
• Central to Kanban
to show progress
in lieu of sprints
• Useful in Scrum to
promote flow
within a sprint to
avoid “hockey stick”
shaped burndown 0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
StoryPointsRemaining Day

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Cumulative Flow Diagram
How is work moving along?

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excella.com | @excellaco
What it measures
What:
Number of work items in a given
status over time
Why:
Highlights bottlenecks, visualizes
amount of work in progress and
cycle time, shows end-to-end flow
through system0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
NumberofItems
Days
Done Testing Development Ready Analysis
Cycle Time
WIP

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How to collect
Day Analysis Ready Develop Test Done
1 4 5 2 0 0
2 4 4 3 0 0
3 4 4 3 0 0
4 8 4 3 0 0
5 7 5 2 2 0
6 7 5 2 2 0
7 6 6 1 1 2
8 4 8 0 1 3
9 5 8 0 1 3
10 5 4 3 2 4
Test

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Comparison to Burndown Chart
• Independent of work item size
and iteration
• Gives insight into bottlenecks
on intermediate steps
• Accounts for changes in scope
• Shows WIP and cycle time
in context
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
StoryPointsRemaining
Day

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Cumulative Flow Diagram
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
NumberofItems
Days
Analysis
Ready
Development
Testing
Done

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Benefits of Improving Flow
Even for Scrum teams!

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excella.com | @excellaco
By delivering some
stories earlier
Reduce
risk
Improving ability to
make adjustments
Increase
feedback
Across the team and
throughout the Sprint
Smooth
workload
Improve flow to…

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excella.com | @excellaco
Wrapping it up
And some additional resources

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excella.com | @excellaco
Additional
Resources
• Burndown Charts vs Cumulative Flow
Diagrams
• 7 Lean Metrics to Improve Flow
• Lean Metrics: Measure Predictability with
Facts over Estimates
• Using Flow Metrics to Deliver Faster
• More Cumulative Flow Diagrams

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excella.com | @excellaco
How to
reach us…
Julie Wyman
julie.wyman@excella.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-wyman/
Hunter Tammaro
hunter.tammaro@excella.com
@htammaro
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wmhunter/

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excella.com | @excellaco
Visualize flow
regardless of Agile approach used
Flow metrics…
• Are simple to collect
• Can be used for predictability and
planning purposes
• Provide richer insights into a team’s
bottlenecks and improvement areas

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excella.com | @excellaco

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excella.com | @excellaco
Extra practice!
Flow metric samples

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excella.com | @excellaco
Throughput
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
#ofWorkItemsCompleted
Week

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excella.com | @excellaco
Cycle Time Distribution
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
0 5 10 15 20 25
#ofoccurrences
(oftheparticularcycletime)
Cycle Time (days)

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excella.com | @excellaco
Cumulative Flow Diagram
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
Analysis
Ready
Development
Testing
Done

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Cycle Time Scatter Plot
What:
Shows cycle time of
individual work items in the
order completed
Why:
Reflects cycle times within
iterations and when
outliers occurred
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
CycleTime(days)
User Story Number
(in order completed)

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excella.com | @excellaco
Cycle Time Scatter Plot
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
CycleTime(days)
User Story Number (in order completed)
User Story
Defect
Expedited