Startup, Scaleup, Screwup by Jurgen Appelo

Author:Jurgen Appelo
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781119526797
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 14.3 Cumulative Flow Diagram

You can easily create a CFD based on the workflow on a Kanban Board. With each status, you count the total number of items (or the sum of their sizes or values) that have successfully arrived at that point. You then plot each of them as a stacked diagram and you draw their lines in different colors. The burn-up chart that we discussed before is actually nothing more than a simple CFD that shows you just two statuses: the amount of work planned and the amount of work completed. But in between planned and completed, you can identify and visualize any number of statuses, giving you more in-depth information about the pipeline of your work.

There are a couple more interesting things that you can learn from CFDs. At any given moment, if you look at the vertical space between two lines, it shows you the amount of work in progress or Queue Length in that particular stage. If you look at the horizontal space between two lines, you get an idea of how much time it roughly takes to move an item from one stage to the other (sometimes referred to as Cycle Time or Operations Time). If you look at the horizontal space between both outermost lines, you see how much time it takes from the moment an item is offered to the team until it is fully done (often referred to as Lead Time or Tactical Time). Additionally, like the burn-up chart, which is just its simpler brother, the CFD also shows you the entire scope of the work, which is the line that’s floating above all the others.

When you draw a Cumulative Flow Diagram on a regular basis, you can see patterns and possible issues concerning the workload of your team. It is a great tool to examine just before Daily Stand-ups, Daily Cafes, or weekly planning meetings, because it helps your team to reflect on their workflow. Apart from scope creep challenges, they might identify slow progress, bottlenecks, long turnaround times, and other productivity issues that they will need to discuss. However, don’t believe that a CFD is going to solve any problems. It merely helps you gain better insights into what’s happening.

So, what is the best tool for your team? The Burn Chart or the Cumulative Flow Diagram? As long as your business is still in startup mode, it makes sense to keep things simple, as I do, by just calculating points completed per week and drawing a simple line that goes up or down. These Burn Charts are easy to make, and they are easy to understand for everyone. But when your business accelerates into scaling mode, and you spend more time on stabilizing and professionalizing your processes, it would be a smart idea to turn your charts into full-blown CFDs. They are more advanced than Burn Charts and give you a lot more information.

It was a Thursday. At a startup event in Helsinki, I interviewed a few dozen startup

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