Content:
1. Introduction
2. How are the Throughput and Flow Efficiency values calculated?
- Throughput
- Flow Efficiency
3. How to Add the Workflow Performance Summary Widget to your Dashboard?
4. How to Customize the Workflow Performance Summary Widget’s Settings?
5. How to Refresh your Widget?
1. Introduction
The 'Workflow Performance Summary' widget provides an overview of some of the key metrics and helps teams keep an eye on how stable and efficient their process is.
The widget works for a single workflow and automatically generates the following key metrics:
Lead time, Cycle time, Block time, Throughput, Flow Efficiency, and WIP.
Here are the general definitions of each of the metrics:
- 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').
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Cycle time accumulation depends on your workflow's configuration and is accumulated only in columns that belong to that configuration.
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Block time shows the total block time of cards from that workflow for the selected time period.
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Throughput counts the number of work items completed on the selected workflow for a given time period.
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Flow Efficiency calculates the ratio between value-adding time and the lead time* required to complete the work and provides the results in percentages.
- WIP shows how many items are in progress at the end of the selected time period.
*Note: In the context of Businessmap, we are using the cycle time (as per your cycle time configuration) as the lead time. This applies to all other analytics in the product that measure flow efficiency.
You can click on each of the metrics' boxes to acquire more information about the cards that were used for calculating each metric.
For Lead/Cycle/Block time, the information will be structured in the following way:
Card title | Lead/Cycle/Block Time (in Days)
Clicking on Throughput will display a list of cards that were completed in the selected time period.
For the Flow Efficiency metric, the information will be structured in the following way:
Card title | Active time (days) | Queue time (days) | Block time (days)
Clicking on the WIP metric will display a list of cards that were in progress during the selected time period.
Important:
Your workflow layout and configurations are crucial for the widget's calculations.
- Make sure that your cycle time configuration is set up according to your process.
- Make sure that you differentiate your columns by marking them as 'activity' or 'queue'. For example, 'In Progress' is usually an activity column, as someone is working on the card, while 'Waiting for Approval' would be a queue column, as work items are to be approved before moving forward.
Both of those configurations can be done via the workflow designer.
Once added, the widget shows data for the selected period* and helps you identify whether there is an improvement or regression in your key metrics compared to the previous period.
* if you have selected 'last 7 days' as the time period, you will not be able to see a lead/cycle/blocked time of more than 7 days.
For example, if you have configured the widget to pull data for the current month, the data that you see will be compared to data from the previous month. There would be green and red arrows going up or down to indicate the change from the previous period to the current one.
For Lead/Cycle/Block time and WIP, the arrow will be green and going downward or red and going up. For Throughput and Flow Efficiency, the arrow will be red and going down or green and going up.
You can adjust the Lead/Cycle/Block time aggregation by clicking on the downfacing arrow and selecting the desired percentile (50, 85, or 95%).
In the 'Flow times per column' section, you can identify if a column is an 'activity' or 'queue' one and get detailed time metrics to check how much time cards spend in each process step. The overview gives you the data on average, as well as the 50, 85, and 95% of cards.
2. How are the Throughput and Flow Efficiency values calculated?
Throughput
Throughput is calculated by taking all of the cards moved to Done or Ready to Archive within the selected period and for the selected workflow and dividing it by the time it took to complete them.
Throughput in this widget is calculated only for cards that have started in the Backlog, Requested or In Progress section of the selected workflow and have been completed in the Done or Archive section of the selected workflow.
This includes cards that:
- Were already in the Backlog, Requested, or In Progress sections before the start of the period selected for the widget.
- Have been created in the Backlog, Requested, or In Progress sections during the period selected.
- Came from a different workflow or lane, which isn’t a part of the filter, and were moved to the Backlog, Requested, or In Progress sections of the selected workflow.
All of these cards must be completed during the selected time in the selected workflow/lane for the widget.
Important:
- Cards that have been discarded are not taken into consideration by the widget.
- Cards, which were in the Backlog. Requested or In Progress in this workflow/lane, but were moved to Done or Archive in a different one are not a part of the calculation.
- If a card has been In Progress and then moved to Done within the selected workflow, it will be included in the calculation.
Flow Efficiency
Flow Efficiency is calculated using 3 different values:
A = Time spent in Active Columns - the total time accumulated by cards in active columns, selected in the Cycle time configuration within the selected workflow and time period.
Q = Time spent in Queue Columns - the total time accumulated by cards in queue columns, selected in the Cycle time configuration within the selected workflow and time period.
B = Block Time - the total time accumulated by cards (within the selected workflow and time period) in active columns, selected in the Cycle time configuration while being blocked.
Flow Efficiency is calculated by the following formula:
Flow Efficiency [%] = [(Cycle Time in activity columns - Blocked Time) / (Cycle Time in all columns)] * 100
Important: unlike for throughput, cards, that have been moved to a different workflow or lane than the one the calculation is configured for are still a part of the calculation.
3. How to Add the Workflow Performance Summary Widget to your Dashboard?
STEP 1: Open a custom dashboard page of your choice and select 'Add Widget' to open the 'Widgets' dedicated panel.
STEP 2: Select the "Workflow Performance Summary" widget.
STEP 3: Configure your widget using the Board minimap tool:
(1) From the dropdown menu, select the board for which you would like to measure the workflow performance. The board minimap visualizes the current board structure and all workflows in it.
(2) Select the workflow for which the widget will collect the data. The widget will automatically calculate the efficiency of the specified flow, and when you save it, it will be added to your dashboard.
Note that you can add multiple widgets for different workflows in order to analyze each workflow's performance separately and even compare them.
4. How to Customize the Workflow Performance Summary Widget’s Settings?
Once you add the widget to your Dashboard, you can further customize it.
Use the three-dot menu to open the "Settings" panel.
How to add a filter to your widget data?
Click on the “Add Cards Filter” to add a filter and select your criteria.
Filters help you monitor data for a particular owner, groups of cards, and cards with a certain priority, color, size, type, reporter, or a custom field. You can even calculate the efficiency for a single card of interest, filtered by its ID, or all cards created on a date of your choice. Similar to other widget configurations, you can include all your custom fields in the filter.
How to change the timeframe of your widget data?
Define the time frame for the metrics from the Period dropdown. You can get the efficiency metrics for:
- Yesterday
- This week (Sunday - Today)
- This week (Monday - Today)
- This month
- Last week (Sunday - Saturday)
- Last week (Monday - Sunday)
- Last month
- Last 7 days
- Last 14 days
- Last 30 days
- Last 60 days
- Last 90 days
- Last 120 days
- Last 180 days
- Date Range (manually choose the start/end dates)
How to configure weekdays and working hours for this widget?
Underneath the timeframe settings, you will find two checkboxes that will allow for additional fine-tuning of the widget:
- The selected period ends today - by enabling this you will get the data for the last X period of time. Every day, the widget will roll over and refresh with the data for that period of time.
- Exclude weekends for Lead time, Cycle time, Block time, and Flow efficiency calculations - by enabling this, the widget will disregard data that was accumulated during the weekend.
- Only include working hours for Lead time, Cycle time, Block time, and Flow efficiency calculations - by enabling this, you can make it so that the widget only accumulates data for a specific timeframe during the working day i.e. from 09:00-18:00.
Additional configurations
When creating a new widget, the following two options are enabled by default.
- Only include items completed within the selected period - the widget uses data only for completed cards in the selected workflow and time period. If you want to see the data from all cards that were a part of your workflow within the selected period (not just the completed ones), you can de-select this option.
If the above option is selected, you will also have the ability to:
- Calculate the total time for Lead time, Cycle time, Block time, and Flow efficiency, even if accumulated outside the selected period - this will allow you to see the total time for all completed cards (including time accumulated outside of the selected period).
In other words, if these additional configurations are disabled, the widget is focused more on the selected period and the time metrics accumulated during that specific period.
If those two configurations are enabled, the widget's focus is shifted from the time metrics of the selected period to the time metrics for the completed cards only and their full lead time.
5. How to Refresh your Widget?
The widget is automatically refreshed once per day. Click the refresh icon from the three-dot menu if you want to refresh the widget manually. Alternatively, it can also be refreshed by using the 'refresh all widgets' option on the dashboard page itself.