Measure Cumulative Flow for the Project

Manage Your Project Portfolio, Second Edition — by Johanna Rothman (108 / 136)

👈 Measure Project Cycle and Lead Time | TOC | Measure Obstacles Preventing the Team’s Progre ss 👉

Cumulative flow is a measure of the work in progress over time compared to the total project scope (see the figure). Many agile teams measure cumulative flow to see whether they are starting more work than they can finish in an iteration.

The value to the team of measuring cumulative flow is that the team can see whether they need to start fewer features and swarm around them to complete them earlier. For you, the one evaluating the project portfolio, the value is in seeing how much work in progress there is. The more work in progress, the less this project has provided value to the organization.

When you start managing the project portfolio, consider asking all your project teams to measure cumulative flow and report it during the portfolio evaluation meeting. If you have teams who are not using agile approaches, you and they need to know whether they have a lot of work in progress and whether you can make any predictions about when that work could be done.

Cumulative flow shows you the work in progress and how long that work in progress takes. As the following figure shows, a serial life-cycle project has significantly more work in progress than the agile team does. In fact, the completed work looks like a hockey stick: a flat line at the beginning and a rapid increase in finishing at the end. Iterative or incremental life cycles have less work in progress.

It’s useful to consider cumulative flow when you have to consider which projects will provide the most value fastest. Measuring cumulative flow provides this value to you:

👈 Measure Project Cycle and Lead Time | TOC | Measure Obstacles Preventing the Team’s Progre ss 👉

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