Tag: Agile Glossary

Definition:

Cycle Time or Flow time is the amount of time taken to get the work done. Specifically, in Agile Development Cycle time is the time taken to move one feature from ‘Next Ten Features’ to ‘Ready for Acceptance Test’. Cycle Time is very easy to measure.

Each feature is selected to be among the next ten features in the product along with the start date. When the feature reaches to the stage of ‘Ready for Acceptance Test”, the time taken to finish or the date, is noted down, against the elapsed days allotted for that feature in a spreadsheet. Similarly, the time taken is noted down for all the other features in a control chart, where each bar gives a visual representation of time taken to finish each feature. This bar graph is useful for predicting how long it takes to deliver a feature. It gives a great sense of horrified awe, when a company starts visualizing, because most of the times people don’t realize how long things really take!

Further Reading:

Book: Lean from the Trenches: Managing large scale projects with Kanban by Henrick Kniberg

Definition:

Common problem in any organization is always missing deadlines. To be more specific, the releases always occur at a later date than planned. Delays can be a real problem, conflicting with your goals. Let’s say our goal was to focus on customers and maximize  our revenue, but the delays causes to lose our customers, and messes up with cash flow. To find out the root cause of the delayed releases or long release cycles, we use cause-effective diagrams.

Long release cycles are highlighted with thicker arrows, and the recurring problems are always highlighted in loops. Initially it may take some time, but spotting these problems will greatly increase the probability of solving the problems effectively and permanently.

Some of the reasons why delayed releases happen:

• Lack of release automation
• Lower priority features not removed from the iteration
• Adding more people to the iteration even though they have nothing to do with the problem

Further Reading:

Book : Lean from the Trenches: Managing large scale projects with Kanban by Henrick Kniberg