Heat Map
- Eloise Vinson
A heat map is a graphical representation of your data where the individual values contained in the graph cells are represented as colors.
In ActionableAgile, the Heat Map Chart tells you the cumulative number of days spent in each workflow state for the specific attribute you've chosen in the Topic chart control. In other words, it displays where your process has accumulated the most Cycle Time at a given step in your workflow for a given attribute.
The cycle time includes any blocked time
What you'll find in this article
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How to read the chart
The horizontal axis always represents the selected workflow stages for your workflow
The vertical axis represents the values available for the chosen topic
The number in the cell represents the total number of days all items matching that topic have spent in a workflow stage.
The color of the cell tells you where in the range of values that number lands. For instance, in the image to the right, all of the highest numbers are red, slightly lower numbers are orange, then yellow, and so on...
Interact with the cells
Here's how to get more information about the data reflected in any cell:
Hover over an individual cell to see the attribute, workflow stage, and total time accumulated.
Click the cell to see all items that have flowed through as well as the amount of time that each spent in that workflow stage.
You can then click on one of the items on the list to get details about the specific item.
The smallest unit is a full day so anything smaller will be displayed as 0
The legend will show you where on the color axis the selected cell sits.
Key Chart Controls
Topic
You can see how long items spend in any workflow state through many different groupings called Topics. The listed topics are pulled from column headers in your data. The list of topics matches the boxes in the Item Filter chart control for your data.
Color Palette
You have a choice of seven (7) color palettes to choose from. Many people use the stoplight color palette called "Green-Yellow-Red" but this isn't usable for many color-blind users who opt for color palettes without green or red such as "Black-Blue".
The colorings are applied to the cells to show a relative relationship between the value of the cells. For any color palette, the highest values will be in cells with the color denoted on the right, the lowest values in cells with the color denoted on the left. So, for instance, in a Green-Yellow-Red palette, the highest values will be in red cells and the lowest in Green. In Black-White, the lowest numbers would be in black cells and the highest in white cells. There are various shades of blends of these colors to fill in some ranges in between.
These calculations for how the exact colors are applied to which number ranges are not published because the heat map is meant to show relationships between the data in the table rather than show colors for pre-defined umber ranges.
Additional Chart Controls
Date Range
The Date Range control allows you to select a specific date range for your completed items across all charts.
Selecting the dates opens a calendar window where you can choose the date range that you want to see.
There are presets to select from, such as Last 30 Days, Last Quarter, etc.
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).
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 appear as columns in the chart. For the below configuration, the first column would be To Do.
If you were to uncheck Dev Active in the image below, the number for Dev Active would be added to the number from Analysis Done. In this way, the total duration is always represented.
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