Cycle Time Scatterplot
- Eloise Vinson
- Julia Wester
The cycle time scatterplot chart shows you the total elapsed time it took for individual items to move from one point of your workflow to another - usually from start to finish.
You can use this chart to:
Find the cycle time of an individual piece of work
See if your cycle time trend is getting longer or shorter;
Set realistic expectations using percentiles and probabilistic forecasting; and
Learn about your work by exploring the clustering patterns of dots and the empty space on the chart.
What you’ll find in this article
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We have a Youtube channel with short demo videos for most charts and longer webinars, including a longer introduction to ActionableAgile
How to read the chart
Each dot represents a work item that was completed. The placement of the dot tells you two things:
The completion date of the item. (horizontal axis)
The cycle time for the work item (vertical axis)
How Cycle Time is calculated
Cycle Time is calculated as: (End Date - Start Date) + 1. We add the 1 so that nothing has a 0-day cycle time. The minimum cycle time is 1.
Your Workflow Stage Chart Control determines your start and end dates as follows:
Start Date: the day the item entered the first checked workflow state
End Date (aka completion date): the day the item entered the last checked workflow state
Getting more info on dots and work items
You can hover over any dot to see the Done Date, Cycle Time, and ID(s) of the item that finished. If there is a number on the dot that means that more than one item finished on the same day with the same cycle time. The number represents how many. 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. Clicking anywhere else on the chart makes the information go away.
Key Chart Controls
Dot Colors
The dots on the chart can be colored based on any available item filter. The options to choose from should be identical to the options available in your item filter. The list is determined by the data that you imported.
You can select a filter type to use for dot colors, select which options you want to show colors for from that filter, and you can even adjust the colors you use for each chosen option.
Select Attribute: Select which attribute you wish to assign colors to.
Auto-Assign All: Simplify adding colors to your attributes by auto-assigning them.
Reset All: Reset all of the dot colors assigned to your attributes.
Individual Attribute Colors: Pick a color for the dot of each individual attribute.
Individual Attribute Assign: Assign the color of the dot of each individual attribute.
Individual Attribute Reset: Reset the dot color of individual attributes.
Default Dot Color: Choose the default color of the dots.
Default Color Palette: Choose a color palette that will be the default for your dots.
Done percentiles (horizontal lines)
When you choose this option, the chart looks at all of the work items represented by and draws percentile lines at certain dates. These lines can be interpreted as "XX% of the time, our work items finish in X days or less." So, if there is an 85% line at 20 days then you can interpret that line as meaning "85% of the time our work finishes in 20 days or less."
It determines where to draw the lines by counting up from the bottom and finding the point at which the appropriate percentage of items are shown.
Pro Tip
Use these percentile lines to create Service Level Expectations (SLEs). You can look at an individual type of work by using filters or all of your work items in total and provide expectations like "We will finish all user requests in 15 days or less 95% of the time." Once you have SLEs, use the Aging Work in Progress chart to help you stick to them!
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 cycle time for a smaller portion of your overall workflow. The cycle times will change to reflect the elapsed time between when the item entered the first checked workflow stage to the time it enters the last checked workflow stage.
This is a common usage of the Workflow Stages chart control.
If you deselect workflow stage(s) but have checked stages either side, the overall cycle time doesn't change because it still entered and exited your workflow on the same dates. So, in order to handle this unexpected loss of data, the chart adds the time for the unchecked stage(s) to one of the checked stages.
See the images below for an example.
The left-most image has all workflow stages visible. The data for a dot shows 0 days in Analysis Active and 29 days in Analysis Done.
The right-most image has deselected Analysis Done. The data for the dot shows the whole 29 days in Analysis Active. It always rolls up to the previous workflow state.
This is not a common usage of the Workflow Stages control.
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.
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
Summary Statistics
This provides you concise, pertinent information about your cycle time data. This box shows you:
How many work items are represented in your chart
The date range represented in your chart
The cycle time for each percentile line
How many items fall between percentile lines
The cumulative number of items for each percentile line (including all percentiles below it)
If you zoom into a subset of your data using the Layout control, the information in this box will change.
Blocked Items
If your cycle time data includes information about blocked time, you can highlight which items were blocked on their way to completion. This makes the blocked items more visible. If you click on a dot you can get information about how long that particular item was blocked.
You can also deselect the option to include blocked time to get a picture of what your cycle time would look like if none of your items were blocked. (see the above section on individual dots)
Cursor
When these configurations are active, the chart looks at where your cursor is and tells you:
the number of items finished on that date
the percentage of items finished by that cycle time
Cycle Time Trend
To see a trend line for your cycle time, check the option "Show Trend Line.”
You can choose between showing the trend of the average, 50%, 70%, 85% and 95% percentiles.
You can choose your cycle time intervals in days. The interval affects the time period used for calculating cycle time.
You can choose your cycle time intervals in days. The interval affects the time period used for calculating cycle time.
A note on the changes to the Cycle Time Trend. In the original version of ActionableAgile, the percentile had an average applied to it, which smoothed out the line. We don’t apply this average anymore as we don’t believe this is what users expect to see. The longer the time frame used, the smoother the line you’ll likely get.
Time Units
By default, the chart shows a dot for each unique calendar day/cycle time combination. However, if you'd like it to calculate by week or month, choose from these alternative options.
Here's an example, if you choose one of the Week options, the horizontal axis now updates to reflect weeks instead of days and each dot now represents all items that finished within the same week with the same cycle time.
Use this to zoom into any specific subset of your data
If you have any questions, please submit them to our help desk.
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