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Flow Distribution is a very useful software delivery metric. As its name suggests, it is one of the Flow Metrics often adopted as part of a Value Stream Management approach to software delivery.
All five flow metrics consider software delivery as an end-to-end process (from ideation to delivery to live) and measure the effectiveness of this process in its entirety.
Flow Distribution is essentially an analysis of Throughput (another common software delivery metric). Flow Distribution looks at the distribution of tickets currently in progress (rather than completed tickets) – and shows the business areas, products (or value streams) within which these in-progress tickets sit.
As such, Flow Distribution shows you where effort is currently being expended across your software delivery teams. This is vital for ensuring that resource is focused on strategic priorities and not being diverted to less productive tasks (such as addressing technical debt or fixing bugs).
In addition, Flow Distribution shows at what stage in the delivery cycle these in-flight tickets sit (e.g. in progress, awaiting QA, in test etc.).
The example Flow Distribution summary chart below shows the tickets opened by the Jira Board or delivery area so that the balance of in-progress work is clearly visible.
Clearly, the measurement of Flow Distribution is dependent on how teams and work are organised. This may be by team, product, value stream or project, for example.
Agile delivery metrics platforms like Plandek enable teams to analyse the root cause of Flow Distribution issues.
Flow Distribution is a useful agile metric at all levels of the delivery organisation. Individual teams can use Flow Distribution to track the balance of work at the team level, but also, very importantly, Delivery and Product Managers can track the balance of work across teams, products and value streams.
As mentioned above, Flow Distribution is one of five commonly used Flow Metrics in software delivery analytics. The Flow Metrics consider software delivery as an end-to-end process – from ideation through to delivery to live. As such, Flow Metrics are commonly adopted as part of effective Value Stream Management within software delivery teams.
The other four Flow Metrics closely associated with Flow Distribution are: Flow Load, Flow Efficiency, Flow Time and Flow Velocity.
Plandek provides the ability to measure your Flow metrics all in one place using our Flow Dashboard, where you can keep track of a combination of Flow metrics including Flow Velocity, Flow Time, Flow Efficiency, Flow Load and Flow Distribution.
It’s easy to set up and get started with measuring Flow metrics in Plandek – simply book a demo with our team and we’ll help you get started.
Free managed POC available.