Flow efficiency refers to the percentage of time spent on valuable work versus waiting on a work item. It is an important metric because low flow efficiency means significant time is wasted waiting rather than working. Flow efficiency can be improved by reducing delays, limiting work-in-progress, automating manual work, and optimizing workflows globally rather than locally. Measuring flow efficiency involves tracking the lead time and touch time of work items to calculate the percentage.

1. Flow Efficiency
The most powerful improvement driver
Principal Consultant & Head of Technology Services
marcio.sete@elabor8.com.au
Marcio Sete
@marciosete

2. What Flow Efficiency is
and why to bother
How you can improve itHow you can measure it
@marciosete
1 2 3

3. #1 – WHAT FLOW EFFICIENCY IS
AND WHY TO BOTHER

4. Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit,
Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings
Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit,
Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings
Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit,
Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings
Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card's limit,
Then the withdrawal should complete without errors or warnings
Lead time
Commitment date Delivery date
Waiting time
Touch Time
@marciosete

5. 40%
20%
100%
15%
40%
30%
75%
75%
Work item 1
Work item 2
Work item 3
Work item 4
Work item 5
Work item 6
Work item 7
Work item 8

6. Touch time X 100%
Lead time
Touch time: 2 .
Lead time: 20
10%
Value added time
90%
Waiting Time
The flow efficiency formula
@marciosete

7. @marciosete
The shocking reality organisations face today

8. Why should I bother?

9. Flow Efficiency
is a soundboard of
your system of work

10. @marciosete
Effectiveness of organisations’ working time

11. Characteristics of environments with high flow efficiency
Throughput
Predictability
Visibility
Stability
Quality
Learning cycles
Effectiveness
Business Responsiveness
Happiness
Sense of Purpose
Professional Pride
Cost of maintenance
Disruptive variability
Failure rate
Time to recovery
Lead time
Queue time
Time to learn
Burnout / Turnover
Rework@marciosete

12. @marciosete
Effectiveness is the goal

13. Effectiveness
from the outside in
is presupposed
whereas
from the inside out
is contextual and temporal

14. #2 - HOW YOU CAN MEASURE IT

15. You need just two things
1. Lead time
a. Commitment date
b. Delivery date
2. Touch time
a. Dots on card
b. Time spent in status
c. Manual entry in a custom field
@marciosete

16. Few things you need to consider
1. Nature of the work
a. Work item type
b. Class of service
c. Size
2. Granularity
a. Days, hours, minutes
3. Sophistication of your solution
@marciosete

17. Utopian in
knowledge/creative work
100%
0%
15%
40%
60%
Normal
(average system performance)
Commonly observed
(low system performance)
Great
(high system performance)
@marciosete
FLOW
EFFICIENCY
LEVELS

18. #3 – HOW YOU CAN IMPROVE IT

19. The big five sources of delay
1. Dependencies on shared services, other teams, specialists
or vendors
2. Too much work-in-progress
3. Team liquidity
4. Manual and repetitive work
5. Blockers
@marciosete

20. Principles and practices with great leverage that
might be helpful in your unique context
1. Loosely Coupled Architecture
2. Test-Driven Development
3. Trunk-based development
4. Comprehensive test automation
5. Build, release and deploy automation
6. Feature toggling
7. Continuous Integration
8. Infrastructure as Code
9. Immutable Infrastructure
10. Dev/Prod environment parity
@marciosete
Technical PracticesWays of working
1. Autonomous teams
2. Limiting work-in-progress
3. Lightweight change approvals
4. Working in small batches
5. Managing flow
6. Making policies explicit
7. Visual management
8. Classes of service
9. Last Responsible Moment
10. Culture of continuous learning

21. Starting the journey...
■ Take a snapshot of your current flow efficiency
● Pay attention to different work item types and classes of service
■ Host a retrospective and commit to pursue evolutionary changes
● Identify sources of waiting time
● Discuss which are by design and which aren’t
● Brainstorm alternatives
● Formulate initiatives
● Prioritise the ones will give you the best bang for buck
■ Set a target to motivate change
● Focus on the Standard class of service to begin with
● Gamify the process and celebrate the small wins
● Hold the whole value stream accountable
■ Visualise flow, batch size, sources of delay and variability
● Make it brutally visible
■ Use dollars to communicate delays
@marciosete

22. “The biggest leverage in improving delivery
rate (often referred to as "productivity") is
not to improve the motivation of the workers,
or to improve the working practices to reduce
the local cycle times in the activity columns,
rather the biggest leverage is to focus on
reducing delays.”
David J. Anderson

23. what I want you
to remember...

24. @marciosete
Effectiveness from the
outside in is presupposed
whereas from the inside out
is contextual and temporal
Flow Efficiency
is the most powerful
improvement driver
The only way of improving
flow efficiency is via
global optimisation
Delays are your
invisible killer
The biggest leverage in
improving productivity
is to focus on
reducing delays
Flow Efficiency less than 15%
is very common (and bad);
between 15-40% is normal;
above 40% is great!
Effectiveness
is the goal
Flow Efficiency
is a soundboard
of your ways of working
Flow efficiency
is contextual
to the nature of work

25. Principal Consultant &
Head of Technology Services
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciosete
https://twitter.com/elabor8
https://twitter.com/marciosete
https://medium.com/@Elabor8
https://medium.com/@marciosete
Thank you! Danke!
www.elabor8.com.au
marcio.sete@elabor8.com.au
Marcio Sete