How to Measure Throughput Using the Boards Flow Metrics Widget?

Table of Contents:

1. What Is Throughput?
2. The "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget Description
    2.1 On-Time Criteria
    2.2 The Widget Legend
3. How to Add the "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget?  
4. How to Configure the "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget?
5. Practical Examples of Using the Boards Flow Metrics Widget
    5.1. With default IN and OUT column criteria
    5.2. With custom IN and OUT column criteria

 

1. What Is Throughput?   

By definition, the throughput metric counts the number of work items completed in a given period of time on your board(s).

Throughput is a key metric that measures performance and shows if your process is effective. Tracking throughput helps Project Managers to maintain a stable workflow and to provide accurate delivery estimates. 

The histogram is a preferred method for throughput visualization. In the example below, a team has delivered 11, 9, 12, and 8 cards, respectively, in Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4. The average throughput is 10 cards per week.

2. The "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget Description

The goal of the "Boards Flow Metrics" widget is to provide a high-level overview of throughput on single or multiple boards for a selected period of time. By default, the widget is set to group the data by weeks.

On-Time Criteria

The widget displays metrics for the work items (cards and initiatives) in all areas on your boards. Besides providing statistics for the work items that have entered and left your process, the widget shows how many of the completed and unfinished work items have met their On-time criteria.

The default On-time criteria that the widget takes into consideration is the "Deadline" property of the items.  If some of the items in your workflow have already missed their deadline criteria, the widget shows that too. 

The widget allows further configuration of the following time-related properties: 

• Cycle time is less than "X " days. Set it up according to your use case. This setting is very useful for service-level agreement monitoring and determines whether time targets for resolution are met. The additional filter allows users to monitor work items that match certain criteria.   
• Planned end — set it up if you apply a Timeline or Portfolio Initiative workflow to your process and need Initiatives monitoring. Initiatives are considered On-time if their Planned end date has been met.

The Widget Legend

• In — cards and initiatives that are created or moved to the "Requested" or "In Progress" areas for the selected date range**. 
• Unfinished — cards and initiatives that are in the "Requested" or "In Progress" areas for the selected date range**.
  - Unfinished Overdue 
  - Unfinished On-time
• Out — cards and initiatives that have been moved* to "Done" or the "Ready to Archive" areas for the selected date range**. The results in Out will depend on your widget configuration (e.g. whether you have enabled the “Include returned to Backlog cards” option).
  - Out Overdue
  - Out On-time

*Note that cards that have been created directly in the "Done" or "Ready to Archive" areas will not be visualized on the widget.

**For example, if you have the date range set to 'this year' and you have the 'group by' setting set to months, it can be expected for a work item to appear in both the statistics for one month and for the following ones.

Let's say a card is created in January, the current month is March, and the card is still not finished (it has not been moved to Done / Ready to Archive). It would be present in the In bar for January (as this was when it was created or moved to the board/workflow), but it will also be present in the Unfinished bar for both February and March, as it is not yet completed. Whether or not it will be in the Unfinished On-time or Unfinished Overdue part of the bar will depend on the on-time criteria.

The diagram bars are clickable and display the corresponding cards in a table format.

 

NOTES:

"IN" value 
The value of In represents all cards that have become present in the "Requested" or "In Progress" area of the board, irrespective if they come from another board or have been created on that board. The timestamp is the first moment of creation/entry. The In metric does not count discarded cards or cards that are currently located in the Backlog. 

• If a card has been created directly in the "In Progress" area, the In timestamp will be the same as the creation date. 
• If a card comes from another board, the In timestamp will be the time when the card has been moved to the board. 

"OUT" value 
A card is counted as Out when it’s moved to the "Done" or "Аrchive" area of the selected board(s). The timestamp is the last moment of entry.

• If we assume that the widget is set to display work items for "Board A" only and, for some reason, a card is moved to a different board, then the card will be counted as Out for "Board A."

Important: There is a separate setting in the widget that enables you to select the exact columns you want to track for the “IN” and “OUT” values. Check pt. 4 for more details.

 

The Blue "Cycle Time" curve

The widget visualizes the average cycle time for completed cards in the selected period of time. 
The blue curve, which goes from left to right, represents the average cycle time and shows the trend over time. Measuring the average cycle time is a good foundation for future project estimates. 
If the line goes down, then you are reducing your cycle time, which usually results in faster delivery.
If it goes up, you should check why things are taking longer than expected and eventually spot bottlenecks in your process.

 

3. How to Add the "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget?  

Open a custom dashboard page of your choice and click on Add Widget to open the "Widgets" panel.

Select the "Boards Flow Metrics" widget, and a configuration wizard will be started. Once you complete your setup, the widget becomes available in your Dashboard.

4. How to Configure the "Boards Flow Metrics" Widget? 

General Settings

Clicking to add the widget will prompt you to select the boards from which you want to retrieve data. This means the widget will display cards and initiatives only from the selected boards.

After you click “Select,” the system will open the widget's configuration panel, where you can configure the following elements.

1. The boards that will be included in the widget
2. The time period you want to get results for
3. How to group your data
4. Y axis data
5. Add cards filter
6. In and out criteria for your cards
7. Working days configuration
8. Additional on-time criteria
9. “Ignore cycle time configuration” setting
10. “Include returned to Backlog cards” setting
11. “Include cards moved to other boards” setting

Let's take a closer look at each of them.

(1) Boards
This is where you choose which boards to include in your widget. Click the “Add” button to select the board(s) you want. You can deselect boards from here too.

(2) Period
Select the period you want to draw the chart for. The available options are: 

• Last 90 days - this is the default value. 
• This week / Last week
• This month / Last month 
• This quarter / Last quarter
• This year / Last year
• Last 30, 60, 90, 180, or 360 days
• Date range — select a custom time period of up to 360 days

(3) Group by
Select the value you want to have on the chart X-axis. The available options are:

• Days
• Weeks - this is the default value.
• Two weeks
• Months
• Quarters 
• Years
• The whole period - this would basically display the totals for the selected date range.

(4) Y-axis data
You have the option to select between "Card Count" and "Card Size."

• "Card Count" shows the number of items in your workflow that are in/out/on-time/overdue. 
• "Card size" shows the cumulative size of items that are in/out/on-time/overdue. 

(5) Add cards filter
It lets you filter the cards that will be included in the widget.

You can set up an additional filter for the cards and initiatives. The widget will display only the work items that match your refined criteria. For example, you can monitor cards that are processed on a certain swimlane or cards that have a specific "tag "value. Click on the "Add cards filter" link to customize your widget.

(6) In and out criteria

Here you can narrow down the scope of your flow by selecting which columns to be included in the widget's IN and OUT criteria.

• Default (based on sections) — all cards that enter the “Requested” or “In Progress” columns/sections will be part of the IN group. All cards that leave the “Requested” or “In Progress” columns/sections will be considered the OUT group.
• Custom — select the specific columns you want to include in the widget:
  • IN Columns — the columns or sections that will be counted in the IN group if a card has been moved there.
    • Any column in “Requested” or “In Progress” sections except those defined in “OUT Columns”
    • List of sections or columns — click on "Add" to manually select the columns for your IN group from the board minimap. In this case, only cards that have been moved to the selected columns/sections will be counted in the IN group.
  • OUT Columns — the columns or sections that will be counted in the OUT group if a card has been moved there.
    • Any column except those defined in “IN Columns”
    • List of sections or columns — similar to the “IN Columns” configuration.

Note: If both “Any column in “Requested” or “In Progress” sections except those defined in “OUT Columns”” and “Any column except those defined in “IN Columns”” are selected, the results will be the same as if you have selected the “Default (based on sections)” setting.

In a customer support scenario, you may want to track only the cards that have been transferred to the PM office (a sub-column in the In Progress area) instead of looking at the entire flow.

(7) Configure Working Days

You can configure the working days in the widget for more precise time measurement. By default, working days are set to Monday to Sunday, but you can change this to Monday to Friday or Sunday to Thursday.

If left to the default setting of Monday to Sunday, the system will count the non-working days in the cards' cycle time. In the example from the video below, we can see that in Week 11, the cards' average cycle time is 76.06 days with the default setting, but 54.23 days with Monday to Friday set as working days. This is why this setting is important when you want to fine-tune your time metrics.

(8) On-time criteria
By default, the widget takes into consideration the "Deadline" property and affects All cards and Initiatives in the selected boards. The widget shows how many of the Unfinished and completed items have met their deadline and how many did not make it before the deadline. 
Click the "All cards and Initiatives" link if you want to apply an additional filter to the work items. It means that only cards that match the refined criteria will be affected.   

(9) Ignore Cycle Time Configuration

If enabled, the engine would take into account the full time the cards have spent on each stage of the process, disregarding the stages included in the Cycle time configuration.

(10) Include returned to Backlog cards

If enabled, all cards that have accumulated time in the Requested and In Progress sections will be included in the widget results, even if they are returned to Backlog. This means that when this option is on, all cards that have been moved from Requested or In Progress will be part of the out on time and out not on time calculation.

If not enabled, cards that have been returned to the Backlog and have stayed there until the end of the configured date range will not be included in the widget. However, if there is a card that was returned to Backlog from In Progress and was later moved to In Progress and Done within the date range, it will be included in the widget.

By default, this option is enabled for new widgets.

(11) Include cards moved to other boards

If enabled, cards that have been moved to another board from Backlog, Requested, or In Progress during the selected date range will be included in the results. If disabled, the results will ignore these cards.

However, if a card has been moved to another board after it has reached the Done or Ready to archive sections, it will be included in the results either way.

 

The "On-Time" Criteria Configuration

You can further set up the On-time criteria (1) and specify the items that will be impacted through the Affected cards (2) field.

Click the "Add On-Time Criteria" link to open the corresponding configuration panel.

The configurable properties are under Regular Fields and Custom fields. 
You can select one or more time criteria of a type to add to the configuration panel.

• Regular fields: Cycle time, Deadline, Planned end.
• Custom Fields: If you have applied any time-related custom fields to your process, they will become available under "Custom fields". You can set them up in accordance with your use case. 

The panel will add your selections as shown in the image below. 

• The "Deadline" property is set by default and affects All cards and Initiatives.
• The "Cycle time" is less than "X " days. The widget takes into consideration the cycle time configuration for the selected board. By default, it affects All cards and Initiatives. Click the link if you want to apply an additional filter. It means that only cards that match the refined criteria will be affected. 
  Tip: In this context, the "Cycle time" criteria is used for service-level agreement monitoring. For example, it is appropriate to apply the cards filter and specify the "Expedite" swimlane to make sure that the time targets for resolution are met.
  
• The "Planned End" property affects all Timeline and Portfolio Initiatives. Set it up if you have applied a Timeline or Portfolio Initiative workflow to your process and need to monitor your initiatives. Initiatives are considered On-time if their Planned end date has been met. Click the link if you want to apply an additional filter. It means that only initiatives that match the refined criteria will be affected.

5. Practical Examples of Using the Boards Flow Metrics Widget

5.1. With default IN and OUT column criteria

By default, when you create the widget and select the board(s), you want to draw data from, the system will show you throughput data for the entire board(s). However, if you want to focus on a particular workflow or lane, you can further filter your results. For example, in a customer service scenario, you may want to focus on reported issues that have been expedited (and analyze how that flow compares to the entire workflow). Your configuration might look like this:

In this scenario, the widget will count all columns in the Requested and In Progress sections as IN, and Done and Ready to Archive columns as OUT.

 

5.2. With custom IN and OUT column criteria

For more complex workflows, you may want to exclude certain columns and focus on a particular part of the process. In a product development scenario, you can configure the widget to track new items from when they are requested to when they are ready for testing, essentially focusing on the initial development stage. To do this, select the columns in the Requested section and the relevant columns in the In Progress section for the "IN" configuration, and the final column from your In Progress section before cards move to the testing stage as your “OUT” criterion. The widget configuration can then look like this: