Day 28 / 100 · Kanban & flow · Cumulative flow diagrams

One chart. The whole story.

A cumulative flow diagram stacks the count of items in each state over time. Read the shapes and you'll see where work gets stuck.

■ To do

■ In progress

■ Done

Vertical gap between bands: work in that state.

Horizontal gap: roughly how long items take.

A widening band: a bottleneck forming.

A flat Done line: nothing is finishing.

Parallel bands: healthy. Widening band: bottleneck.