How to use Report Builder Flow Time Report

What is Flow (Time)?

Flow is a measurement domain in SAFe that controls how efficient a company’s value chain is. Flow Time measures the total time of all steps in a workflow. Usually, the measurement starts at the time of brainstorming for the idea and continues all the way to production. However, in some cases it is more useful to determine the flow time for specific steps of a workflow.

In this way, you can accurately track specific workflows and then compare them with each other. The shorter the flow time, the lower the cost of potential delays that can occur.

Actonic’s Flow Time Report

To help you focus on what’s important in your company, Actonic has created the Flow Time Report. This report measures time for you and provides the results in a visually appealing form.

Our Flow Time Report can

• Calculate the average amount of time it takes to complete a task

• Calculate the average flow time for each task

• Identify development deviations

• Display the output in a histogram with work items

To help you enjoy the full benefits of Report Builder Flow Time Report, we have prepared a step-by-step guide for you.

1. Navigate to Report → Create Report → Scripted Reports → Flow Time→ Flow Time

2. In the report itself, you have the option to define a scope. In this field, you can use JQL (Jira Query Language) to flexibly search for desired operations. In this way, you can quickly obtain information in a simple and extended manner, just as you wish. Here you will find an overview of the JQL syntax.

3. For Percentiles, select a percentage value to better estimate the distribution of flow time. Percentile values are commonly used in statistics to indicate the percentage of observations below which a selected group or operation falls.

Percentile values are particularly useful when you want to interpret results in relation. For example, if you know that you scored 83 out of 100 on a test, that number does not tell you how well you did compared to other participants. If the score shows you that yours is in the 90th percentile, it means that you did better than 90% of the other participants.

So select the desired percentile here to put the numbers in a meaningful relation.

4. After you set the filters, you will see an output similar to this:

On the x-axis of the Flow Time chart you can see the days that you have defined as a time period. The interrupted red lines are the percentile values. The y-axis shows the number of tracked operations (features) that fall within the time frame.

5. Lastly, you can export the created report to PDF, JSON or to Microsoft Teams.

6. After exporting, you have the possibility to view the HTML code of your report and customize it according to your requirements. To do this, go to the “Template” tab and edit the code individually.

Conclusion

This tutorial has shown that you can use Report Builder Flow Time Report to track your workflow very individually and thereby increase your efficiency. SAFe Product Owner and Scrum Master can evaluate sprint development thanks to the measurement, identify outliers in the process and reduce the overall flow time as a result.