WIP is the amount of work that has been started but not finished. A run chart is a line graph that shows the changes in a data series over time. So, this chart shows you your daily WIP over time.
What you'll find in this article
How do I read this chart?
Each dot represents the amount of work-in-progress for a given day. The placement of the dot tells you two things:
The WIP date. (horizontal axis)
The number of items in progress for the chosen date (vertical axis)
How WIP is calculated
By default, the cumulative count of items in all of your workflow states will be shown. You can look at a smaller section of your workflow using the Workflow Stages controls.
Getting more info on dots and work items
You can hover over any dot to see the WIP Date and ID(s) of the item(s) represented by the dot. When you hover over the dot you will see the list of item IDs.
You can click on the dot to make it stick so that you can hover or click on individual IDs to see more details about work items, including the number of days the item has spent in each workflow state. Clicking anywhere else on the chart makes the information go away.
There’s a relationship between WIP and Cycle Time
In general terms, the more WIP you have, the longer that work takes to complete. So, the WIP Run Chart can help you combat slow delivery by keeping an eye on, and control of, your WIP levels. Want to learn more? Read about Little's Law.
Key Chart Controls
WIP Trend
To change the WIP Trend Intervals, navigate to Controls for this Chart and enter the desired value. The interval affects the time period used for calculating your WIP.
The confidence level has been changed to a moving average.
For some of our Beta Charts we are testing a simplification of the trend lines as we don’t feel the percentile choice adds significant value. As always, we are open to user feedback about this change.
The controls to toggle the Daily WIP and Moving Average on and off are located at the bottom of the chart.
Cursor
When you choose Date and/or WIP, the value on the relevant axis will be highlighted based on your cursor placement
Item Filter
You can filter down the dots shown on this chart by choosing one or more available filters.
If you want to clear your filters so that all dots show up again, you click the Reset button.
Additional Chart Controls
Layout
Use this to zoom into any specific subset of your data. You can narrow down the data horizontally (smaller time scale) and/or vertically (to narrow the range of throughput).
Workflow Stages
Deselect undesired workflow states to WIP rates over time for a subset of your workflow.
If you have any questions, please submit them to our help desk.