Ah yes, throughput.
The agile metric that is very popular in practice, even if the term itself is not used as much. What I mean by that, is that a lot of questions on productivity is actually about throughput, even though it is not mentioned by its name. You can recognize this in the question: "How much work did we do?".
The question above refers to the amount of work completed in a time period. What you measure with throughput is in contrast with other agile metrics, such as cycle time and lead time, which assess how long it took for work to be completed.
Now, let's dive right into throughput as an agile metric.
What is throughput?
Usually, I give an example that is relatable, and then I go to the simple definition of the agile metric. I will still do that, even though we loosely defined throughput above. The relatable example is about relocating into a new home. We zoom in on the example of packing boxes prior to moving.
You dive right in, and start packing items and belongings into boxes. Here are the results for the first three days of packing:
- Day 1: You packed 10 boxes.
- Day 2: You packed 7 boxes.
- Day 3: You packed 4 boxes.
You're still not finished packing, but now we understand your throughput. In this case, throughput is the amount of boxes that you are packing each day. Day 1 was productive, mostly because you started with the easy items and were motivated. Day 3 was a bit slow, but that's okay. You still packed boxes!
Your total throughput for three days was 10 + 7 + 4 = 21 boxes.
Your average daily throughput was 21 boxes / 3 days packing = 7 boxes per day.
The throughput from this example, can be understood as the same question that your friends and family would ask, if you told them that you were packing boxes. For example, my friends would ask me something like: "How is it going?". What they actually mean is how many boxes I have packed so far. They would ask me about my throughput, without mentioning the term.
Your answer can be 21 boxes in total, 7 boxes per day, or even that you managed to pack 4 boxes today. You could also visualize this on a chart, which shows that your throughput is decreasing every single day. This is why using throughput can be a crucial metric for teams. Not just the absolute number, but also the trend visualized in a chart too. By doing that you can get insight into inefficiencies, bottlenecks, future planning and predictability.
So, throughput in our example, shows how many boxes go through the process of being packed, and then put somewhere ready to be moved to your new home. In other words, boxes moving through a system and then put into its stated place, which is why the metric is conveniently called throughput.
Now, I promised you a simple definition. Let's get to that.
Simple definition of throughput
Throughput is the amount of work completed in a specific period of time.
