In this article:
1. Overview of the Time Metrics in Businessmap
2. What Is Cycle Time and How to Configure It?
2.1. How Is Cycle Time Configured?
2.2. Where Is Cycle Time Visible?
2.3. How Does Businessmap Track the Cycle Time of Deleted Columns?
2.4. How Is the Cycle Time Metric Measured and Tracked?
3. What Is Lead Time?
4. What Is Logged Time?
5. What Is Blocked Time?
“Blocked time” in Analytics
1. Overview of the Time Metrics in Businessmap
There are various metrics that teams use to measure the performance and efficiency of their process. The time metrics, which are at the core of this article, provide valuable insights into your teams' operations and performance. Businessmap collects historical data for your workflow automatically.
These are the time metrics you can collect and analyze in the system:
- Cycle time and Lead time metrics help teams estimate how long it takes for work items to be completed.
- Lead time* begins when a new task first enters a column that belongs to the Requested or In Progress sections in a workflow and ends when it is finally moved out of the In Progress section (usually when it is moved to Done).
* Lead time accumulation is not configurable. - Cycle time accumulation depends on your workflow's configuration and is accumulated only in columns that belong to that configuration.
- Lead time* begins when a new task first enters a column that belongs to the Requested or In Progress sections in a workflow and ends when it is finally moved out of the In Progress section (usually when it is moved to Done).
- Logged time indicates the pure time spent on a certain task. Users log time manually against each task or subtask.
- Blocked time shows how long a card has been blocked and how long it takes for a blocker to get resolved.
2. What Is Cycle Time and How to Configure It?
Businessmap automatically tracks the times a card has spent in each column, then it adds those values together to form the cycle time of a card according to your configuration. A shorter cycle time means an optimized process and faster delivery time. Longer cycle time means delays for customers and might indicate process inefficiency.
Cycle time is configured per workflow. You can choose which columns from your workflow to be included in the calculation.
For example, it is often appropriate to exclude the Backlog, Done, and Ready to Archive sections from the cycle time calculation, as cards are not being worked on when they are in these stages.
This, however, will depend on your exact use-case scenario.
2.1. How Is Cycle Time Configured?
To configure your Cycle time, open the board edit mode from the “Edit Workflows” icon.
The Initiatives workflow and the Cards/Teams workflow can have separate cycle time configurations.
Note: If your board consists of multiple Team Workflows, each workflow can have a separate cycle time setup too.
Click the “Configure cycle time” link in the upper right corner of each workflow to open the configuration panel. The panel will visualize all columns in the respective workflow. Checkmark the columns you want to be included in the cycle time calculation.
Note: At least one column needs to be selected when configuring the cycle time metric, otherwise time will be accrued for all columns.
2.2. Where Is Cycle Time Visible?
Businessmap automatically collects the cycle time of every card that passes through your board. From the View settings in the board sidebar, you can configure how the accumulated cycle time is displayed in the closed view for cards and initiatives separately. The displayed number is always measured in days.
2.3. How Does Businessmap Track the Cycle Time of Deleted Columns?
Workflows often change when columns are added or removed, and this impacts the cycle time of the cards that go through the affected stages.
To prevent the loss of cycle time data associated with a deleted column, select where you want to move it to. Choosing an existing column, such as "In Progress," could potentially lead to further confusion, as the cycle time data from both columns would be combined.
However, if you select “Discard the data,” the card cycle time for the deleted column will be stored in a separate section under the Metrics tab of the card.
The new section named "Deleted columns" stores and displays the cycle time of the cards that have been in the column, which no longer exists on the board.
2.4. How Is the Cycle Time Metric Measured and Tracked?
With the Businessmap Analytics modules, Project Managers and their teams can analyze cards' Cycle time and work out why tasks are taking longer than expected. Cycle time is a good indicator of any process deviations.
Here is the list of charts that provide insight into the Cycle time metric:
- The Cumulative Workflow chart
- The Cycle Time Scatterplot
- The Cycle time Histogram
- The Aging Work in progress
- The Heat Map chart
Important: You can learn more about these Kanban metrics and analytics here.
3. What Is Lead Time?
Lead time is the total amount of time from the confirmed customer order until delivery. Businessmap automatically records the time each card has spent between process initiation and completion. You can check the Lead time per card using the Metrics tab of the respective card.
Open the tab and click the arrows to expand the generic Kanban stages view (Backlog, Requested, In Progress, Done) to see how much time was spent in every column.
Cycle time and Lead Time are important factors for customer satisfaction and a good indicator of team performance. Teams can measure those metrics from the analytics modules embedded in Businessmap.
You can learn more about Lead time and Cycle time here.
4. What Is Logged Time?
Log time shows how much pure time has been spent on a given task. Users log time manually.
Logging working hours on a card is easy and every user can do it on a card or subtask level. There are several ways to log time against a task.
The logged time is stored in the Metrics tab of the corresponding card.
The Worklog report tool in Businessmap generates reports and displays a summary of logged hours for a user, a group of users, or a work item for a given period of time. You can learn more about the Worklog reports here.
All regular users can check how much time was logged for every task from the My Queue and Worklog feature, where you can choose to see how much time has been accumulated for: today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month.
Account Owners and admins can manage worklog categories and adjust how users log time in the account from the Worklog Configurations panel.
5. What Is Blocked Time?
The block time shows how long a card has been blocked and how long it takes for a blocker to get resolved. There are several ways to block a card and thus indicate a problem/blocker. All blocked cards accumulate block time. The block time per card is stored in the respective Metric tab.
“Blocked time” in Analytics
You can measure the blocked time metric using the embedded analytics modules. The Block Resolution time provides a convenient overview of all blocked cards and shows how many times a task has been blocked, for how long, and the reason for the blocker.
The blocked time metric helps you identify which blocker types are most critical. You can learn more about blocker clustering here.