Use these metrics to evaluate the impact of flow decisions. They provide evidence to validate improvements in speed, quality, clarity, and cognitive load.

1. Speed & Responsiveness

  • ⏱️ Lead time
    Time from request (idea, ticket, user need) to delivery.

  • 🔃 Cycle time
    Time from when work starts to when it’s completed.

  • 📬 Time to feedback
    Time from launch to receiving actionable user/system feedback.

  • 📦 Deployment frequency
    How often new code or changes are delivered to users.

2. Quality & Stability

  • ⚠️ Change failure rate
    Percentage of changes that fail or require rework.

  • 🐞 Bug/incident rate
    Volume or severity of production issues tied to recent changes.

  • 🚨 Escalation rate
    Frequency of internal escalations or support issues.

3. Efficiency & Flow Health

  • 📋 Work in Progress (WIP)
    Total active items or initiatives being worked on.

  • ♻️ Flow efficiency
    Percent of time work is actively progressing versus waiting.

  • ➡️ Handoff count
    Number of team transitions for a typical work item.

  • ⏳ Queue time / wait time
    Time work spends waiting between steps or approvals.

4. Clarity & Alignment

  • ✅ Team confidence score
    How confident the team feels in ownership and direction (typically survey-based).

  • 🧭 Alignment score
    How clearly work aligns to a strategic objective or user need.

  • 🧾 Clarity of ownership
    Number of issues tagged with ambiguous or dual ownership.

5. Cognitive Load

  • 🧠 Cognitive load self-assessment
    How overwhelmed teams feel (via internal survey).

  • 🌐 Responsibility breadth
    Number of distinct domains or services a team owns.

  • 📞 Support requests / interruptions
    Frequency of inbound interruptions from other teams.

Now that we’ve collected metrics, we can explore how to run a Flow Clinic to bring this all together.

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