Throughput: a measure of progress, completion or strategic focus...or all of the above?

[Chris Boys]

I saw a definition of Throughput yesterday:

"maximising the amount of product or service that our organisation delivers within a specific period." 🎯

A measure of Progress
At Umano.tech, we think of Progress as an agility outcome, an attribute of high performance.  We group Throughput with other metrics such as Completion Rate, Work in Progress and Hidden Work to give teams a visual read on what drives their progress, so they know where they're at and what they can do about it.

Quantity v Quality or both in balance?
It carries a bias to quantity, rather than quality.  But I don't think it needs to be at the expense of quality. Here, I refer to quality in the sense that you're working on the right things that matter most to your customers AND in the sense of 'working software', and you're not just pushing crap through your value stream that's buggy. 

Focus and effort
I think Throughput can also give teams insight into their strategic focus.  By looking at the type of work items completed (delivery teams specifically), teams can view effort spent on building new features vs remediating and refactoring. It can also help answer the question 'have we got the balance right between new features and tech debt?'

🤩 Do your teams think Throughput is a good, or even critical measure of performance?

🧐 When do you use Throughput?

🤓 How do you use Throughput?

Chris

(Shoutout to Possessed Photography on Unspalsh for the image!)

[Amoerzi]

Nice read! I think Throughput does not consider the value output and its dangerous to solely focus on production. Success lies under the actual challenges you are solving and the impact that you're bringing to your users/customers.

It should definitely be considered but not as important as measuring value.

From experience working in larger companies - they find measuring value too complicated and stick to Throughput as their main objective. As Marty Cagan calls it 'the disease' of larger, well-established companies. 

Curious to know more about the visual read on driving progress for teams! What visuals are we talking about? :) 

[Chris Boys]

Thanks @Amoerzi I completely agree with your point of view here!

The larger and more complex the entity, the 'simpler' things get. 

My observation is that measuring team practices as an input to their performance gets dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.  This is usually at the expense of truly understanding a fuller picture of how a team works and the impact their ways of working can have of the value being delivered to customers.

As humans, we're at a stage of our evolution where we consume information increasingly visually and less by text.  The 'emoji - creep' to convey meaning in replacement of words would be one clear example.

So for me and the team here @Umano.tech, we're obsessed with how to visualise team performance metrics in a way that can accelerate learning and propel action. 

We know teams that learn faster grow faster and go faster. 

We've researched visual metaphors that we love (i.e. the fitness apps like fitbit) and what we hate (excel spreadsheets and charts).  We think we've come up with some simple yet beautiful ways to showcase team performance (using 25 different metrics) across their workflow that can accelerate learning and propel action.  

Our ultimate aim: empowered teams absorbing a richer, fuller picture of their performance much more quickly so they can align through data-inspired conversations and take greater control over their ways of working. Put another way, great inputs to solving/ delivering great outcomes! 

I'd love to show you how we do it; let me know if you'd like a demo!