The purpose of this chart
Cumulative Flow Diagrams (CFDs) depict overall process stability. This chart is the only flow analytic that simultaneously shows the relationship between the three metrics of flow mentioned in Little's Law: Work In Progress (WIP), Cycle Time, and Throughput.
How to read the chart
Click the Summary Statistics Button to view quick stats about the viewable chart. 
Key Chart Controls
Click on any image to make it bigger!
Summary Statistics
This summary stats box gives you the following quick stats, based on the data you have selected:
- Arrival Rate (in items/day)
- Throughput (in items/day)
- Daily WIP (in items)
- Cycle Time (in days)
This information is provided in a tabular format with rows representing each individual workflow stage but also one for the system (which is for your workflow as a whole). Please note that all values are calculated averages.
This panel updates as you filer or zoom in or out on your source data.
Rate Lines
These are an easy way to glean some of the most important information from the CFD at a glance. It can tell you just by the slope of the lines if your system is stable. By stable, we mean, is the rate at which work enters your system (the top rate line) about the same as the rate at which it exits your system (the bottom rate line).
Parallel lines: Work is entering your last checked workflow state at the same rate it enters the first. (You are finishing the same amount as you start.)
Diverging lines: Work is entering your last checked workflow state at a faster rate it enters the first. (You are finishing more than you start.)
Converging lines: Work is entering your last checked workflow state at a slower rate it enters the first. (You are finishing less work than you start.)
WIP Tooltips / Cycle Time Tooltips
These tooltips let you see at a glance information for each stage or for the system as a whole.
The first picture on the right shows tooltips for each stage. You can see the color represents the stage of the workflow it is showing you information for. The second picture shows you information for all the stages combined. These tooltips have a gray background.
The tooltip showing days is your cycle time tooltip. It tells you the calculated average cycle time for the system or a particular stage as measured on that day.
The tooltip showing items is your WIP tooltip. It tells you the number of items in the system or a particular stage on that day.
Workflow Stages
What happens when you deselect a workflow stage depends on where the stage is located.
If you deselect workflow stage(s) at either end of the workflow, you are tracking the flow of work through a smaller portion of your overall workflow.
This is a common usage of the Workflow Stages chart control.
If you deselect workflow stage(s) but have checked stages to the left or right, the overall rate lines don't change because the same number of items still entered and exited your workflow on the same dates. However, you have removed a part of the workflow. So, in order to handle this unexpected loss of data, the chart adds the data for the unchecked stage(s) to preceding checked stage.
See the images to the right for an example.
The left-most image has all workflow stages visible. The data for the yellow workflow stage shows 0 days and 1 item.
The right-most image has deselected the yellow workflow stage. The data for this stage was added to the turquoise workflow stage which reads 2 days and 8 items when previously the number of items was 7. The 1 from the yellow was added to it to make 8.
This is not a common usage of the Workflow Stages control.
Additional Chart Controls
CFD Layers
"Smooth" CFDs are really approximations of what happens between data points. To see a more realistic view of what is happening with your process data, uncheck the Smooth checkbox.
Key Chart Controls
Click on any image to make it bigger!
Summary Statistics
Rate Lines
WIP Tooltips / Cycle Time Tooltips
Additional Chart Controls
CFD Layers
Layout
Item Filter
Workflow StagesYou can filter down the items used to build this chart by choosing one or more available filters. If you want to clear your filters so that all work is represented again, you click the Reset button.