The Workflow stability graph displays the number of items started and completed for the selected period.
This allows you to measure the stability of your work processes by clearly indicating whether more items are started than completed or vice versa. You can display this data by sprint or week, as you prefer. 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 chart, the period displayed corresponds to the last three months, and the display mode is by week. We can see some fluctuations in the overall number of items (both started and completed), which is normal, but the graph shows some significant variations. Overall, the team completes 9% more items than they start.
This may reflect that the team completed more simple tasks in a given week while starting on some items that were considered more difficult in another week. Throughput can be an interesting complement to learning more about the type of items delivered for a particular week or sprint. In the same way, the Service Level Expectation can be useful for items that have exceeded the average cycle time at the time of their delivery.
Psst! While carry over from week to week is inevitable in some cases, having an equal (or at least close) number of items started and completed is an indicator of consistency. Having a consistent team allows you to better estimate its delivery capacity, which will enable you to better prepare projects to provide a sufficient workload to ensure that delivery deadlines are met, while increasing your throughput.
This graph also includes a variation indicator, which compares the variation of the stability of the current period to the variation of the previous period. To learn more about the variation indicator and its calculation, check out this article!
Calculating the metric
As soon as an item moves to an active status (usually the 2nd column of your board), the start date of its development cycle is considered and measured in the week or sprint concerned. Then, when the item is completed (usually the last column of your board), the end date of its cycle is also considered in the week or sprint concerned.