I’ve been viewing our Cumulative Flow Diagram and some interesting stats surrounding the work we are developing, our current flow rate and WIP. Today I was able to see how increasing our WIP directly affects our Lead Time.
Our big spike is due to all the items being placed on the backlog (TODO) – although some of these may never be implemented more on this in the future!
To summarize some of the information I can see (and you can’t!):
Average Lead Time for any sized item from inception to live:
- 35 days – 7 and 11 items in progress
- 21 days – 2 and 5 items in progress
There are a number of things to note:
- Variability in size has an impact on lead time – large items increase lead time.
- Increase in Work in Progress decreases lead time.
The above ties nicely in to Little’s Law.