{"id":1694,"date":"2019-03-26T22:41:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T21:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/?p=1694"},"modified":"2025-05-15T15:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T13:21:23","slug":"flow-efficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/flow-efficiency\/","title":{"rendered":"Flow Efficiency: Powering the Current of Your Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How can we be more efficient? What’s holding us back from delivering great customer value, sooner?<\/p>\n

These are pivotal questions shared by all success-driven product managers.<\/p>\n

Productivity rises with the improvement of team engagement<\/a> and working practices.<\/p>\n

The greatest leverage in increasing productivity though is focusing on avoiding delays.<\/strong> Eliminating the causes that block our work and accumulate waiting time is the best way of getting more done, with less effort.<\/p>\n

Any reduction of inactive time will improve your overall cycle time. Looking at wait time is usually the easiest and cheapest area to investigate first when it comes to process improvement.<\/p>\n

When trying to trim down on your waiting times, one of the key metrics in Kanban can be of great help – flow efficiency.<\/b><\/p>\n

The higher your flow efficiency is, the faster and smoother tasks flow through your process.<\/p>\n

What is Flow Efficiency?<\/h2>\n

Essentially, flow efficiency is the ratio between your active time and total time.<\/p>\n

It tells us how much work in progress is actually in progress.<\/p>\n

To calculate your flow efficiency percentage<\/i>, simply divide the time you actively spend working with your total cycle time and multiply the result with a hundred.<\/p>\n

\"Kanban<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s suppose your team needed 10 <\/i>days to deliver a feature, but has only spent two days<\/i> working on it. The flow efficiency of that feature would be 20%.<\/p>\n

2\/10 x 100% = 20%<\/i><\/p>\n

Not an ideal percentage, but far from bad. Keep in mind it’s not uncommon for teams that are new to workflow management to start with an efficiency in the 15% range.<\/p>\n

But in a highly-saturated market where quick turnaround is imperative, mature teams are able to reach 40% efficiency of their flow.<\/p>\n

This is considered an optimal target due to the unpredictable nature of knowledge work. (2<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Teams with a flow efficiency in this range have the competitive edge to deliver quickly and consistently.<\/p>\n

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Analyzing the Efficiency of Your Flow<\/h2>\n

Avoiding the causes behind delayed tasks is the key to a higher flow efficiency.<\/p>\n

But before you start searching for those bottlenecks, you need to be able to measure your flow efficiency at first place.<\/p>\n

Let’s explore how you can design your Kanban board<\/a> to do this.<\/p>\n

Seeing the Clear Picture of Your Process<\/h3>\n

Whichever project management tool you’re using, make sure you divide the states in your workflow where tasks are being worked on<\/i> and held up waiting<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This will give you a more realistic overview of your process as you’ll be able to:<\/p>\n