The market landscape these days is unpredictable and is shifting at a rapid pace. So, top companies have increasingly adopted the Scaled Agile Framework. They have done this as they know that by following this framework, they can optimize their value streams. Also, they know that this framework will help them meet the ever-evolving demands of their customers. Even after investing considerable budget, resources and time, many organizations face hardships to achieve their expected return and strategic goals. The reason is that they are not in a position to measure flow within their value streams. It is turning out to be a blind spot for many organizations.

This blind spot leaves organizations vulnerable to reduced efficiency and productivity. As a result, they face reduced competitiveness and missed chances. This trend makes them realize the need for proactive measures to come out of these obstacles and achieve successful results.

The latest version of Scaled Agile Framework SAFe 6, gives importance to Flow Metrics and Value Stream Management as crucial ideas to increase business agility. To be more specific, the Flow Metrics in SAFe 6.0 are considered important factors for an effective acceleration of flow and measurement. In turn, it paves the way for business impact and improved value. You can gain a detailed understanding of SAFe Flow Metrics here:

Evaluating Flow

Flow measures help with spotting how effective an organization works in delivering value. In SAFe, the Flow Framework offers 6 metrics. These metrics can help with evaluating different aspects of flow. SAFe, as you know, is a flow-based system. So, in SAFe, each metric is applicable directly. Further, the Scaled Agile Framework defines flow predictability to evaluate how Solution Trains, Agile Release Trains and teams deliver value to businesses against their planned objectives. The below table shows the 6 flow metrics in SAFe:

Before you gain detailed information on these 6 flow metrics Scaled Agile, you should gain basic knowledge of the metrics:

Metrics – A Basic Understanding

Metrics are nothing but measures that are consented upon. These measures will measure how well an organization moves forward toward technical goals, Agile team’s business, Agile Release Trains, large solutions and portfolio. 

Business Agility positions fresh performance standards for businesses. It motivates businesses to bring effective and quick response to upcoming business chances. Nevertheless, to improve agility, the teams, stakeholders and leaders of a business should have a technique to dependably evaluate the present state. This will help them spot the areas of improvement. To continuously improve business performance, the choice of how and what to measure is a crucial enabler. SAFe Flow Metrics can be of great help in this regard.

SAFe – The Flow-Based System

Let us take the case of larger organizations. They always look to gain complete knowledge of how well their business grows. They also intend to know about visibility from a business perspective. Also, larger organizations will always be interested in knowing whether they move forward on the right path. To help businesses with these intentions, the Scaled Agile Framework focuses on three core metrics. Flow is one of them, while the other two are outcomes and competency:

• Flow denotes how efficiently a business delivers value to customers
• Competency is the knowledge that a business has on how its practices deliver value to customers.
• Outcomes will let a business know whether its solutions meet the requirements of customers and the business.

With these 3 metrics, businesses can achieve a scalable model. It will function as a simple yet comprehensive measurement model. Businesses can apply this model to each level, where SAFe practices are followed.

To help you understand the value of flow, you can consider the Scaled Agile Framework as a map for your business. Here, the flow metrics can function as the GPS. It means that a map cannot properly show the route without GPS. This example indicates how important is flow metrics in the Scaled Agile Framework.

6 Flow Metrics Explained

1. Flow Distribution

This metric denotes not only the allocation but also the management of work across varied teams and value streams within an organization. It encompasses the distribution of work items like features and user stories. This distribution should take place in a way that improves the value flow via the system.

2. Flow Velocity

Let us consider that your business is engaged in automobile manufacturing. In this case, the flow velocity denotes the number of vehicles your organization produces within a given time frame. For instance, let us consider that you plan to produce 1000 cars per day with your workforce. 

In your domain, based on the kind of service or product you build, the flow velocity metric might not be simple to measure. This is particularly true when you do not ship your product. Nevertheless, if you produce a service, you might probably rely on some kind of technology to support that service. For instance, in the car production example, it can be digitally-enabled systems. With this system, you can measure the number of functions or features that your team deploys within a particular timeframe. You can quantify this number as flow velocity.

The important thing to remember here is that the purpose of gathering this data is to measure the team’s performance. You can measure in terms of the efficiency and productivity of your team. Trends will be help spot whether the performance as a whole is degrading or improving over time.

3. Flow Time

With the flow time metric, you can evaluate the overall time elapsed for all the steps in a workflow. So, with this metric, you can evaluate how efficient the entire system is. This metric is typically evaluated from ideation to production. Still, it can be helpful to evaluate the flow time for particular portions of a workflow like code commit to deployment. With this evaluation, you can spot chances for improvement. 

Flow time is typically measured based on the average time length it takes for the completion of a specific kind of work item. It can be anything like an epic, capability, feature or story. With the help of a histogram, you can get a useful visualization of the flow time. With a histogram, you can spot outliers that might need focus and indemnify the objective of bringing down the overall mean flow time. 

Flow time metric helps organizations ensure that the teams focus on what matters. In turn, they can deliver value to the business and customers. Above all, they can do this quickly. The shorter the flow time, the lesser will be time your customers spend awaiting fresh features. Also, shorter time ensures reduced delay costs that your organization handles.

4. Flow Load

Among the other flow metrics Scaled Agile, flow load denotes the number of items presently in the system. Maintaining a restricted and healthy number of active items is important to enable the quick flow of items via the system. Here, the restricted number of active items denotes restricting the work-in-progress numbers. 

To measure flow load, a Cumulative Flow Diagram is the tool commonly used. The reason is that it will help with effectively visualizing flow load over a given period. The Cumulative Flow Diagram will show the quantity of work in a particular stage. Also, from this diagram, you can know the rate at which items are received into the work queue. Further, you can know the rate at which they are completed. The former is called the arrival curve, while the latter is called the departure curve. At any given point in time, the flow load will denote the vertical distance between the curves.

Flow load is an important metric because from it you can know about the excess work in progress. The probable result will be an increase in future flow times. The reason is that queues begin to build in your system. So, it is important to evaluate and bring down flow load. Above all, it will help you see how frequent deliveries bring down the flow load and at the same time, improve flow speed and time.

5. Flow Efficiency

With this metric, the flow framework will evaluate wastes in a value stream. It is the ratio of active time out to the total flow time. To be short, it measures the total flow time expended in activities that add value to waiting between steps and working.

Let us consider that your system is yet to be optimized. Here, the flow efficiency is the bare minimum number that you can find in single digits. Let us consider that the flow efficiency is low. It indicates that a lot of time has been spent unnecessarily. A higher flow efficiency denotes swift value delivery.

6. Flow Predictability

This safe program predictability measure denotes the ability to forecast and estimate the time it takes for working items to move via a value stream or system. It encompasses the ability to predict when a specific project or task will be completed. This Scaled Agile program predictability measure is done based on past delivery patterns, historical data and team performance. This program predictability measure SAFe aids with setting realistic expectations for stakeholders, resource allocation and planning. 

Conclusion

When these SAFe Flow Metrics are used in combination with other discovery tools and when they are used in support of improved decision-making, they will help with effective measurement. Also, metrics interpretation should be done carefully in this process. It is equally important to comprehend the effect of metrics on behaviors.