Metric Definition
Speeding Transitions Rate is a useful Agile delivery metric. It looks at how effectively workflow management tools (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps) are being used by the engineering teams. Specifically, it tracks how accurately teams are updating ticket statuses as work moves through the software delivery process.
‘Speeding tickets’ are defined as those that spent less than 60 seconds in a particular ticket status. As such, it shows where engineers are retrospectively updating ticket statuses (e.g. at the end of a sprint), having forgotten to do so in real time.
If this is happening, it is very difficult to analyse workflow and make delivery process improvements – as there is no record of actually when tickets were in a certain status and for how long they really remained in that status.
As such, when the Speeding Transitions Rate is high, it becomes impossible to analyse Cycle Time and Flow Efficiency and identify where bottlenecks may lie within the end-to-end delivery process.
Speeding Transitions Rate is a popular metric in Plandek for teams keen to improve their basic processes and usage of their DevOps toolset. As per below, Plandek allows Team Leads to define different durations for their own definition of ‘speeding’ (e.g. they may choose to track a time length longer than 60 seconds).
Delivery metrics dashboards like Plandek enable you to analyse delivery, engineering and DevOps metrics in a number of different ways.
For example, you can analyse the Speeding Transitions Rate, by a team, by issue type (as per the graphic below), by transition and over time.
This enables teams to quickly identify where the problem lies and to coach the engineers responsible in the importance of using workflow management tools effectively – in order to provide real visibility of the workflow process.
Related metrics
Speeding Transitions Rate is a useful ‘process hygiene’ metric to improve DevOps tool usage in Agile teams.
In essence, it is a stepping-stone to achieving data-driven delivery through the analysis of critical delivery metrics such as Cycle Time, Lead Time and Flow Efficiency.
Key use cases
Organisations often think that they are unable to move to a metrics-led delivery culture because their underlying usage of tools like Jira is limited/compromised.
Indeed, we often hear delivery managers who say… ‘we are not yet ready for an analytics tool like Plandek as our underlying processes and usage of Jira need tightening up first…’
However, Plandek’s ability to surface metrics like Speeding Transitions Rate – shows why this argument is flawed. Indeed, Plandek is a useful analytics tool, especially if there is concern about imperfect usage of Jira or related DevOps tools!
Until teams start tracking metrics like Speeding Transitions Rate and tightening up on the usage of their workflow management tools – they will never be able to move to a data-driven, continuous improvement Agile culture.
Speeding Transitions Rate should, therefore, be analysed as a first step towards moving to a data-led delivery culture, where teams have total visibility of their own end-to-end delivery process so that they self-improve over time.
Expected outcomes
A high level of Speeding Transitions Rate is to be avoided. It is symptomatic of poor systems usage and results in limited visibility of teams’ workflows. It, therefore, prevents effective analysis of Cycle Time and Flow Efficiency and, as such, may well conceal bottlenecks in the end-to-end delivery process.
On the other hand, reducing Speeding Transitions Rate results in immediate benefits, as it makes the effective analysis of teams’ workflows possible and is, therefore, a key stepping-stone to data-driven Agile delivery.
About Plandek
Plandek works by mining data from toolsets used by delivery teams (such as Jira, Git, CI/CD tools and Slack) to provide end-to-end delivery metrics/analytics to optimise software delivery predictability, risk management and process improvement.
Plandek is a global leader in this fast-growing field, recognised by Gartner as a top nine global vendor in their DevOps Value Stream Management Market Guide (published in Sept 2020).
Plandek is based in London and works with clients globally to apply predictive data analytics and machine learning to deliver software more effectively.
