Flow Metrics: What They Are & Why You Need Them

ddegrandis.com @dominicad
Flow Metrics:
What they are & why you need them
Dominica DeGrandis
Director, Digital Transformation

• Flow metrics are tied to business value
• Flow metrics are based on outcomes
• Flow metrics provide a feedback loop to improve decisions
WHAT’s THE POINT?

1. Flow Time – a measure of speed
Yes, let’s
do this!Flow Time:
The duration
from when work
enters the value
stream to its
completion.

90th percentile filtered
on business requests
Measuring Flow Time helps with predictability
date
Percentiles
answers Q:
“What’s the
probability of
completing
work in x
days?”
Inspired by Troy Magennis http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/

Look at Flow time
How fast? Flow Time
date
Unplanned
work delays
Planned
work
Inspired by Troy Magennis http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/
.
What we
measure
impacts people
b/c people
value what is
measured.

ddegrandis.com @dominicad date
2. Flow Velocity – a measure of productivity
Flow Velocity:
The number of
items
completed
during a given
time frame.

ddegrandis.com @dominicad date
FV trend over time provides data for teams to see delivery rates
Question:
Does Flow
Velocity
improve
with faster
Flow Time?

Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Unplanned Work
Transaction costs:
Low for a one-time 6 month supply
High for a one day supply.
Knowledge work is perishable
Consider Reducing Batch Size

Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Unplanned Work
Unplanned Work: Interruptions that prevent you
from finishing something or from stopping at a
better breaking point.
Unplanned Work is a time thief b/c
unplanned work usurps planned work
@dominicad
While economies of scale can reduce costs in manufacturing,
software is a different story.
Two things to consider:
• Transaction cost
• Holding cost

3. Flow Efficiency - a measure to expose wait time
Flow Efficiency:
The percentage of
time where work is
in an active state
vs. a wait state.

ddegrandis.com @dominicad “If you measure anything, measure wait time.”

“Things take too long” is a universal problem
work request
How many get work intake
requests via email?
Disconnects in communication
interferes with collaboration
& delays delivery

4. Flow Load – a measure to balance demand & capacity
Flow Load:
All the partially
completed work.
All the work-in-
progress (WIP)
in the value
stream

Dominica DeGrandis
WIPis a leading indicator

Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Too much Work-in-progress (WIP)
High WIP means that
other items sit waiting for
service longer.
The single most important
factor that affects queue
size is capacity utilization.

Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Too much Work-in-progress (WIP)
Queuing Theory allows us to
quantify the relationship between
wait times and capacity utilization.
Wait times increase exponentially
as utilization approaches 100%.
Queuing Theory: Applied statistics that studies waiting lines
If the goal is speed,
consider managing work by queues.
http://reinertsenassociates.com/books/

Dominica DeGrandis
Projects and tasks that compete with
each other.
Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c
people take on too much WIP when
priorities are unclear.
• Visualize WIP
• WIP limit as enabling
constraint
• Primary factor of speed
is the amount of WIP
Set WIP Limits to balance demand against capacity

5. Flow Distribution: a measure to make tradeoffs clear
A decision to do one thing is a decision to delay something else.
The proportion of
work items in a
value stream,
adjusted depending
on the need to
maximize business
value.

Flow Distribution allocation example
(3)
(1)
(5)
(5)
WIP
limit

Sample Value Stream Dashboard
Project to Product: How Value Stream Networks Will Transform IT & Business
(Mik Kersten) https://itrevolution.com/book/project-to-product/
https://go.tasktop.com/DevOps-Enterprise-Summit-Las-Vegas-Speaker-Presentations.html

What we measure impacts people
because people value what is measured.

6. A metric to gage happiness
“How likely are you to recommend working for this company to a friend?”
Safety Example Q’s:
• On my team, failure causes inquiry and not blame.
• Our leadership is open to hearing bad news.
• In my org, failures are learning opportunities and messengers are not punished.
@nicolefv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avauW5FAWCw
promoterspassivesdetractors

7. The Aging Report

7. Change Failure Rate (CFR)
Answers the Q: What % of changes to prod fail?
CFR = # of failures / total # of work items completed
Ex: 60 items completed in
Dec, 20 of them resulted in
a defect. Dec CFR is 33 %.
Failure - a change resulting in an
outage or degraded service where
hotfix, rollback or patch required.

Change Failure Rate – a measure of Quality
Change Failure Rate
# Failures
# total done items
date
Oh - ok – I
see what
you mean!!!
What we
measure
impacts people
b/c people
value what is
measured.

53,308 security incidents, 2,216 data breaches,
2,216
https://www.verizonenterprise.com/resources/report
s/rp_DBIR_2018_Report_execsummary_en_xg.pdf
Allocate
capacity
for
security

WHAT’s THE POINT AGAIN?
• Flow metrics are tied to business value
• Flow metrics are based on outcomes
• Flow metrics provide a feedback loop to improve decisions

MIK KERSTEN
CEO & Co-Founder
Tasktop
SUZETTE JOHNSON
Agile Center of Excellence Lead
Northrop Grumman
ROBIN YEMAN
Lockheed Martin Fellow
Lockheed Martin
MARK FORD
Lead Developer, TIAA
Community Director, Vivit
KRISTEN BIDDULPH
Certified Agile Leader
Nationwide Insurance
KYLE WILLIAMS
Manager
Deloitte
DAVE WEST
CEO
Scrum.org
DOMINICA DEGRANDIS
Director, Digital Transformation
Tasktop
JEFF ZAHORCHAK
Manager, Enterprise Applications
Select Medical
NICOLE BRYAN
VP, Product
Tasktop
FABIO ECHAVARRIA
Senior Consultant
Deloitte
CARMEN DEARDO
Senior VSM Strategist
Tasktop
Register at:
connect.tasktop.com

Email: dominica@SendYourSlides.com
Subject: flow
To receive:
• copy of this presentation deck
• excerpts of Making Work Visible
• Tasktop video on JIRA/SN tool
integration
• Forrester article: Agile-Plus-DevOps
With Value Stream Management
• IT Rev paper: Overcoming
inefficiencies in work mgmt. systems

Flow Metrics: What They Are & Why You Need Them

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