Making metrics visual
One of kanban's core values is continuous improvement. But how do teams ensure they're continuing to improve? One word: visuals. When the team can see data, it's easier to spot bottlenecks in the process (and remove them!). Two common reports kanban teams use are control charts and cumulative flow diagrams.
A control chart shows the cycle time for each issue as well as a rolling average for the team.
ProTip: The team's goal is to reduce the amount of time an issue takes to move through the entire process. Seeing the average cycle time drop in the control chart is an indicator of success.
A cumulative flow diagram shows the number of issues in each state. The team can easily spot blockages by seeing the number of issues increase in any given state. We can see in the chart below the amount of code waiting to be merged (red) significantly increases over time. This creates a bottleneck that denies the customer of features and fixes that have already built, and increases the likelihood of massive integration conflicts when the work does get merged upstream.