8. excella.com | @excellaco
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
10. excella.com | @excellaco
Comparison to Velocity
Similarities
• Team delivery
over time
• Provides predictability
Differences
• Independent of work
item size
• Not tied to a sprint
• Simplicity of collection
16. excella.com | @excellaco
Average Cycle Time
What:
The arithmetic mean of
cycle time tracked over
time
Why:
Helps visualize trends
and provides data for
predicting delivery
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1 2 3 4 5
CycleTime(days)
Sprint
17. excella.com | @excellaco
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 of
cycle time tracked over
time
Why:
Helps visualize trends
and provides data for
predicting delivery
18. excella.com | @excellaco
Cycle Time Distribution
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
#ofoccurrences
(oftheparticularcycletime)
Cycle Time (days)
median
average
85% confidence
95% confidence
What:
Shows how
often each cycle
time occurs
Why:
Differentiate
between trends
and outliers
20. excella.com | @excellaco
Use in Scrum & Kanban
• Central to Kanban
to show progress
• 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
22. 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 Validate Develop Ready Backlog
Cycle Time
WIP
28. 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…
29. 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