Flow Efficiency

The flow efficiency chart shows you how efficiently work moves through your workflow. It takes the overall cycle time of your workflow and breaks it down into active (working) time and idle (waiting) time. It uses this information to calculate the percentage of your total cycle time is spent actively working versus idly waiting.

You can use this chart to:

Determine if cycle times are longer due to idle waiting time (and therefore you may want to focus improvement efforts on reducing wait instead of speeding up active work).
See if your improvement efforts are improving how efficiently work moves through your workflow.

This chart is just an indicator and should be used as one data point in your search for information.

How to read the chart

The key metric in this chart is the Overall Average Flow Efficiency percentage at the top of the page. This is the average efficiency of all selected items based on all configurations set in the chart controls.

To get this overall calculation you have to calculate information for individual items and the bar chart shows the data from those calculations:

The horizontal axis represents the flow efficiency value achieved by individual work items
The vertical axis represents the frequency that the flow efficiency was achieved. In other words, how many work items had a particular flow efficiency percentage.

Pro Tip
Don't focus too much on the flow efficiency of individual work items, the value in this metric is at the aggregate level. However, looking at the flow efficiency of different types of work can be very meaningful and help you further identify where flow problems may exist.

Interact with the bars in the chart

If you do want to take a look at the individual item information used to calculate the overall percentage, you can explore the bars in the chart and find:

The flow efficiency achieved by the items reflected by the bar
The number of items reflected by the bar
The list of work items reflected by the bar

You can click on the bar to make the dialogue box sticky and then you can hover over or click on any individual work item to see more information about that item.

Key Chart Controls

Queueing Stages

You use the Queueing Stages control to tell the chart which workflow stages represent waiting time (time where work is sitting idle.) In the image to the right, there are 2 workflow stages that are designated as queues. All the time spent in those stages will be counted as idle/waiting time for the flow efficiency calculation.

When you first navigate to the chart there are no queuing stages configured and the chart will only be using Blocked Time to calculate flow efficiency.

Blocked items in Azure are those work items with a “blocked” tag (non case-insensitive)
Read more: Identifying Blocked Items

In this situation, you'll see the following message at the top of the chart in orange under your flow eficiency metric.

Calculation Inputs

This control gives you a bit more control over what the chart uses in its calculations.

Blocked Days: If checked, this will include blocked days as idle/waiting time for the flow efficiency regardless of which workflow stage the item resides in.
- Please note that, if you have items blocked while in a queueing stage, it doubles the idle time while those conditions exist. There is a request in our product backlog to reconsider this particular aspect of the functionality.
Queueing Stages: When this is checked, the chart allows you to denote certain workflow stages as queuing stages and considers that as idle/waiting time for the flow efficiency calculations. When unchecked, the Queueing Stages control disappears and you are no longer able to set those and the information is not used in flow efficiency calculations.
Include Items with 0% FE: If checked, work items that have spent their entire "life" in idle states will be included on the chart. If you don't want this, uncheck this line item.
Include Items with CT <= 1: If checked, work items that had a cycle time of 1 day or less will be included. If you would like to exclude those items, uncheck this line item.

You must have either Blocked Days or Queueing Stages checked in order to calculate flow efficiency. Without this, there is no idle/waiting time designated so the chart cannot calculate a flow efficiency. In this situation, you'll see the following message at the top of the chart.

Additional Chart Controls

Cursor

When these configurations are active, the chart looks at where your cursor is and tells you the

The Flow Efficiency achieved by individual work items
The Frequency that the flow efficiency was achieved (the number of issues).

Layout > Show Date Control

This configuration option shows you the past data used and allows you to select a smaller data set to use for flow efficiency calculations. As you change the selection, you will see the values in the chart change.

Item Filter

You can filter down the items used for this chart by choosing one or more available fields related to your work items. If you want to clear your filters so that all data is used again, you click the Reset button.

Workflow Stages

Only checked workflow stages will be used for the flow efficiency calculation. Uncheck stages if you want to calculate the flow efficiency of a smaller part of the overall workflow.

Please ensure that all stages between the 1st and last checked stages are checked as unchecking one will cause an issue with your flow efficiency calculation. This is noted here on the Known Issues page .

If you have any questions, please submit them to our help desk.