PMP lesson · Agile Metrics & Events · Agile metrics · lesson 3 of 5 · about 6 minutes
Flow metrics: lead time, cycle time, throughput and Little's Law
Agile, Kanban, supportFree preview
Goal: After this lesson you can tell lead time from cycle time, apply Little's Law, and explain why reducing work in progress makes delivery faster.
1The situation
Fast work, slow delivery
The warranty team works on each request for only about two days once it starts. Yet customers complain that requests take five weeks. The team feels unfairly judged: “We are fast!”
Both sides are right. The work is fast; the waiting is slow. Thirty items are sitting in progress, and each new request waits behind all of them.
2Four flow metrics
Flow metrics describe how work moves through the system:
Lead time
Customer view
Request → delivery, including waiting.
Cycle time
Team view
Start of work → delivery.
Throughput
Output rate
Items finished per period.
WIP (work in progress) is the fourth: items started but not finished.
Long lead time + short cycle time = queues. Fix the waiting, not the working speed.
3Lead time vs cycle time
Most of the lead time is waiting, not working.
4How it looks on the exam
Exam-style question 1. A Kanban board shows an average of 30 items in progress, and the team completes 6 items per week. Assuming a stable system, what is the average lead time, and how can it be reduced without increasing capacity?