The Throughput graph displays the number of items delivered for the selected period.
It also displays the average number of items completed for a given period. You can display this data by sprint or week, depending on your preference. However, note that if a Kanban-type board has been linked to your Axify project, the "sprint" option will not be available in the filters at the top of the page.
Reading the graph
For the following graph, the period displayed corresponds to the last three months, and the display mode is by sprint. Overall, we can see that this team delivers 12 items per week, on average. We can also see some dips in the graph, indicating a decrease in the number of items delivered for specific weeks.
This graph also includes a variation indicator, which allows you to compare the number of completed items for the current period to those of the previous period. To learn more about the variation indicator and its calculation, check out this article!
If your team works in sprints, it can be interesting to switch from the sprint view to the week view in order to see if the team completes its items at the end of the iteration or if they are completed in a more stable way throughout the week, thus eliminating the potential pressure on the team.
Since this graph is interactive, hovering over it with your mouse allows you to display more details for a given week. For example, for one week, we can see that 18 items have been completed and that these are divided into 5 different types.
You can see the trend of your deliveries by referring to the red dotted line. The goal here is to have an upward trend, thus increasing the throughput. Having said that, the main goal is to get a stable delivery.
Psst! Axify counts the number of items and not the number of scrum points. Therefore, the complexity of delivered items has no impact. That being said, you can compare the number of items delivered to the time invested per item type (displayed above the flow) to get more information about the complexity of a given delivery. You can also compare this data to the Service Level Expectation (pictured to the right of the throughput in Axify) to learn more about some of the items completed during that period. In addition, the Change Failure Rate (DORA metrics) can give you an interesting angle on the quality of your deliveries by compiling the number of deployments that led to incidents.
Calculating the metric
The calculation of the throughput is quite simple. As soon as an item is moved to the "Completed" status of your board, it is added up. The type of each completed item is also considered, and a percentage is assigned based on the volume of completed items for a given type.