Content:
1. Analyze Your Workflow’s Performance Over Time
2. Archive Timeline Initiatives
3. Business Rules Improvements
4. Other Improvements
1. Analyze Your Workflow’s Performance Over Time
The focus of Kanbanize 9.5 is our new predefined widget - “Workflow Performance Summary.” You can use it to gain an overview of the main metrics within your workflows, so you can easily analyze your process performance over time.
Before you add the widget to a dashboard, you need to choose what workflow it applies to.
The widget consists of the following sections:
- Workflow Performance Indicators
- Flow Times Per Column
Let’s take a look at what data they represent and how to configure it.
1.1. Workflow Performance Indicators
- Lead Time- the elapsed time of work in the process since it entered the “Requested” area until it reached the “Done” area
- Cycle Time- the elapsed time of work in the process depending on your cycle time configurations
- Block Time- the time work remained blocked in the process
- Throughput- the number of work items delivered for a given period
- Flow Efficiency – the % ratio of the value-added time (activity columns) versus the total lead time (including queue columns and block time)
- WIP- the number of “in progress” work items you had at the end of a given period
For the “Lead Time”, “Cycle Time,” and “Block Time” indicators, you can choose to display data based on the 50th, 85th, or 95th percentiles.
Next to each indicator, you will see trend lines and percentages (increasing or decreasing), showing you whether you’re performing better or worse compared to a previous period. For example, if we’re analyzing the last 60 days, the system will compare it to the 60 days before that. Depending on the metrics you’re looking at, the trend lines and percentages will be either green or red, going up and down.
This will give you insights if you’re improving your delivery capabilities in that workflow over time.
1.2. Flow Times Per Column
Below the performance indicators, the widget also displays a table showing you how long it takes for work to “flow” through your process steps. On the left-hand side, you can see all columns (from the “Requested” and “In Progress” areas) of your chosen workflow, including the activity and queue stages. On the right-hand side, you can analyze the average flow times of each column, including the 50th, 85th, and 95th percentiles.
This helps you understand where work (a certain percentage of it or on average) spends more time, so you can dig deeper into the root causes.
1.3. Configuring The Data
You can refine the data you see through the widget’s settings which are accessible from the “three dots” at the top right corner.
There, you can change your chosen workflow or apply an additional card filter. You can also configure the period for which to display and compare data.
The additional settings allow you to exclude weekends or only include working hours for Lead time, Cycle time, Block time, and Flow efficiency calculations.
To learn more about the “Workflow Performance Summary” widget, check out our dedicated article.
2. Archive Timeline Initiatives
To facilitate your work with the “Timeline Workflow”, we’re making it possible to archive completed timeline initiatives. This can help you improve the structure of your timelines and enable better visualization of your initiatives.
Similarly to all other completed cards, you can archive a timeline initiative from:
- The initiative’s context menu
- The settings menu inside the initiative’s details
Once archived, you can view your initiatives in a Permanent Archive for the “Timeline Workflow”, which is accessible from the timeline’s board settings menu.
From there, you can also unarchive a timeline initiative.
When unarchiving timeline initiatives, note that the initiative will take its previous place on the timeline. If its place has been occupied by another initiative, you will be prompted to choose another track where the specified time slot is available.
For more specifications on archiving timeline initiatives, follow this link.
3. Business Rules Improvements
Moving forward, we’re also introducing some improvements in the business rules notifications.
3.1. Co-Owners Are Available in Notifications
First, you can send notifications directly to your card’s co-owners when adding an internal user as part of a specific business rule.
3.2. Author in Notifications’ Subject Line
Second, we’re adding the “Author” property in the subject line of a notification message, so you can quickly see who initiated an action that triggered a specific business rule.
4. Other Improvements
As always, we’ve got some other smaller but helpful improvements in store for you. Let’s summarize them below.
- Hide Unfilled Custom Fields on Cards
To improve the visualization of your cards, we’re releasing an option to hide the empty custom fields in a closed card view. All you have to do is choose “Filled Fields Only” under “Show Custom Fields” in the card’s view settings.
- Hide Archived Card Links from Initiatives
To help you keep your focus on the work at hand, you can now hide archived card links from your initiatives. To do this, we’ve expanded the capabilities of the shortcut that “Hides the additional information for the cards on the board” [ALT + SHIFT + M]. Except for its usual behavior, applying it will also hide all archived links from the initiatives’ closed card view.
- Expand All Comments Option
Moreover, to make it easier for you to read threads of lengthy comments, we’re releasing a new “Expand all comments” option in the comments tab of a card.
- Copy Inline Images from Card’s Details
We’re also allowing you to copy inline images from the card’s details by accessing their context menu in “view mode”. Keep in mind the option is available only for local images.
- Additional Information on User Identities
Finally, to reduce ambiguity created by users with similar usernames, we give you additional information on their identities when executing specific actions (through pop-overs). Those include:
- Sending a card comment as an email
- Sharing a business rule with users
- Viewing a card’s existing contributor(s)
Happy Kanbanizing with version 9.5!