In this post, I’ll cover flow metrics — why teams use them, what they are, and my tips for getting started. A balanced set of flow metrics can be a powerful tool for reflecting your reality as a team. It can also be an effective way to communicate your reality to business stakeholders, using language that means something to them. But first, here’s a quick synopsis of how I landed on the structure of this post.

At the Agile2019 conference in DC, I was asked to distill my talk on data and metrics into a 10-minute circuit training session. My objective was to present one talk to six different groups over the course of an hour.

If you haven’t participated in a circuit training before, here’s how it works: Picture 500 people in a large conference room, gathered around six stations. Each station has a large round table, some chairs, a flipchart, and a speaker. Each group rotates from one station to the next at the direction of a timekeeper, who resets the clock for each 10-minute session. By the end of 60 minutes, everyone in the room has heard six, short presentations, each designed to deliver three actionable takeaways. 

For my session on flow metrics, I started with “why” (as any proper Simon Sinek fan would do) before I dove into the “what” and “how.”

Why should we measure our work?

One of the biggest reasons for  collecting data on our work is to provoke conversations with our colleagues around pain points we experience in certain areas. By “conversation,” I don’t mean gripe session; I mean a dialogue around the things we want to fix that can spark real change. Here are a few examples of the two main categories of pain points: team pain and business pain. 

Common Causes of Team Pain

• Overloaded people drowning in work
• Too many meetings, which contributes to being overloaded
• People held accountable or made responsible for work without being able to provide input on decisions — a feeling that you have no say and no influence in the work you do

Common Causes of Business Pain

• Things take too long
• No visibility on the status of requests — someone asked for something three weeks ago and they have no clue where it is
• Lack of predictability — estimates don’t match up with intended delivery dates

What metrics should we measure?

At a minimum, I suggest capturing a balanced set of metrics — one that can address the internal pain points for both business and teams. Flow metrics, specifically those that capture speed, load, efficiency, and performance, are useful because they reflect the team’s reality and they can be linked to business value.

A balanced approach to measuring flow includes:

Category	Flow Metric	Definition
Speed	Flow time	Elapsed time for all activities
Performance	Flow velocity (throughput)	How many items delivered
Efficiency	Flow efficiency	Work time/wait time ratio
Load	Flow load	Load on teams (WIP)

If you don’t lead with a balanced set of metrics, you risk developing data myopia. Let’s say, for example, that speed is the only metric you’re tracking, and the team’s load increases. The more load (i.e., work in progress or WIP), the more context switching you have, which leads to longer  cycles, lower performance, and meager efficiency. If you’re only focused on improving one metric — and not comparing it to other metrics — it’s easy to miss the corresponding impacts of one metric on the others.. 

While I’ve focused so far on flow metrics that measure outcomes, I also think it’s important to capture the cultural aspect of your work. Consider introducing  a “flow safety” metric to your toolkit to identify risks from dark debt. If people don’t feel safe if work items are flagged as blocked, or when they disagree with the priority of work, then work may become invisible, be done “under the table,” and not appear in the metrics.

How to get started measuring work? 

Getting started with flow metrics takes planning and alignment. First, find  a person from the business side who is willing to try something new. Maybe they’re in a state of crisis and willing to try anything — or maybe they’ve been reading up on the benefits of flow and value stream management and want to try it out. No matter what their motivation is, it only takes one astute decision maker on the business side to start a revolution. Once they show other decision makers the benefits of using flow metrics, more business stakeholders tend to follow. 

After you’ve teamed up with your business partner, work with them to define a four-to-six week metrics adoption experiment, where you capture one new flow metric each week for your value stream until you’re tracking a balanced set.

For more information on using data and metrics as change agents in your work, check out these resources:

• Making work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow
• Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework
• Focused Objective Tools and Resources
• Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability 
• Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

Reflection

I’ll close this post by returning to my experience in the circuit training session and offering this short reflection: Ten minutes flies by fast. The next time I do something like this, I’ll cover less material and reserve more time for questions. I’ll also spend more time whittling my full talk  into the most concise and critical takeaways for people to consume. All in all, the circuit format seemed to resonate well with people who attended the conference. I was honored to participate as a speaker and look forward to the next gathering.