You need a predictable and quality software development process to keep your customers happy, maximize your resources, and avoid burnout.
But when your team juggles too many tasks simultaneously, you get delays, context switching, and higher failure rates.
That’s why managing your flow load is essential.
In this article, we'll discuss the benefits of tracking this KPI, how it interacts with other key flow metrics, and how to manage it correctly.
Let’s dive in.
Flow metrics track if and how well work moves through the software development process. Each metric focuses on a different aspect of the workflow, helping you understand both efficiency and bottlenecks in the system.
Let’s break them down:
Flow load measures how many work items are in progress at any given time.
As mentioned above, overloading teams leads to higher failure rates and slower deliveries. Conversely, underloading teams means not maximizing your resources. A healthy flow load ensures you can deliver features efficiently without being bogged down, resulting in improved enterprise software delivery.
To avoid the negative points, you need to make the work visible. That’s why you should follow this critical metric.
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Better flow predictability: Tracking and managing flow load lets you predict more accurately when you will finalize tasks. As such, planning future work and releases will be much easier.
Managing flow load first means making the work visible; that’s why we advise you to track WIP. Secondly, you want to balance keeping your team fully engaged and not overwhelming them. Handling too many flow items simultaneously leads to context switching, inefficiencies, and delays. Conversely, a very low flow load points to bottlenecks or the fact that your team isn’t fully utilized.
Here’s how to find that sweet spot:
Another way to manage flow load effectively is to prioritize work items based on their age. You should never let tasks age too much; instead, you should swarm to complete them. Sequencing tasks properly minimizes bottlenecks and maximizes flow efficiency.
Without prioritization, the most important tasks don’t move through the pipeline, which increases the risk of – and the actual – delays.
Large tasks can slow down the stream flows and create unnecessary bottlenecks. We advise breaking large work items into smaller, more manageable pieces. That way, you can reduce cycle times and move items through the value stream more efficiently.
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A push-based system, like Scrum, plans a set number of tasks for a given period (such as two-week sprints) and commits to completing them within that timeframe. In a push system, multiple tasks are tackled simultaneously, often increasing batch sizes.
In contrast, a pull-based system like Kanban allows you to pull work into the next pipeline stage only when you can handle it. You start each task only after completing the previous one, keeping the workload manageable and reducing the risk of bottlenecks. This approach prevents overloading any part of the workflow, so your teams won’t be piling up tasks in progress.
Flow load should be adjusted based on your team’s capacity and aligned with broader business goals. By making work visible, you can uncover instances where the team works on multiple initiatives simultaneously. This visibility allows for meaningful discussions around priorities, identifying conflicting objectives, and suggesting trade-offs with business stakeholders to keep focus on what matters most.
Flow load doesn't exist in isolation. It's most helpful when analyzed alongside other flow metrics. This combined analysis provides a deeper understanding of how well the product value stream performs and where improvement is needed.
Let’s see some examples.
If you notice that flow time is consistently long during certain phases (e.g., testing), you probably have a persistent bottleneck during this phase. To address this, parts of the process should be automated to reduce delays.
Let’s say your team typically completes 10 items per sprint (measuring flow velocity) but currently has 30 items in progress (flow load).
When velocity slows down, it may be due to a bottleneck where multiple items are stalled in a specific column or phase. Making work visible helps the team identify the root cause and address these items to restore flow.
Impact on flow load: Improving flow velocity by focusing on bottlenecks enables your team to manage the current flow load more efficiently, helping to complete tasks without overwhelming the workflow. Working on splitting items into smaller items will increase velocity so that WIP will be more manageable and items will flow smoothly in your workflow.
If you find that you spend a lot of time waiting (for approvals, reviews, etc.), your flow efficiency is reduced. Streamlining approval processes or delegating authority can minimize waiting time, ensuring that more phases of the work cycle are productive.
If you spend too much time fixing defects (e.g., 40% of work items), quality issues dominate your team’s time. Addressing the root causes of these defects helps you rebalance flow tasks and deliver more new features.
Axify offers powerful features to manage flow load and optimize continuous delivery. Axify gives you a common language between business and IT teams so you can make better decisions around software delivery that lead to better organizational performance for extended periods.
Ready to improve your team's flow load and optimize your software delivery?
Book a demo or contact us today to see how these powerful tools can transform your team's workflow!
