Flow, process and networks
Cumulative flow diagram
Shows the number of items in workflow states over time to reveal work in progress and bottlenecks.
- Chart
- Workflow monitoring
- Trend over time
What it answers
Where is work accumulating in the workflow?
- Shape
- Stacked workflow-state areas
- What it shows
- Backlog growth and queues.
Example
The question
Where is work piling up in our delivery process?
Work items by stage, last 12 weeks (cumulative flow)
Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.
When to use it
Use it when
Monitoring work in progress and bottlenecks.
Avoid it when
When states overlap or snapshots are inconsistent.
How to read it
Read band thickness for each state's count at matching dates.
Note
Bands normally represent state counts despite the cumulative name.
The data you need
- Layout
- Long table
- Fields
- Date: date; State: text; ItemCount: nonnegative integer
- One row is
- One workflow-state count at one snapshot date. What is the grain?
- Rules
- Use mutually exclusive states and common snapshot dates. Define which items belong to the population.
- Optional
- Raw alternative: ItemID,State,ValidFrom,ValidTo or complete transition history.
- Preparation
- Validate the input grain and missing values. Use mutually exclusive states and common snapshot dates. Define which items belong to the population.
- Units
- Bands normally count items in mutually exclusive workflow states at each snapshot. Total counts arepopulation snapshots.
Worked example
Snapshot ToDo 20, Doing 5, Done 10 totals 35. At another date Doing 10 with stable inflow may indicate a growing in-progress queue.
| Date | State | ItemCount |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-01 | ToDo | 20 |
| 2026-01-01 | Doing | 5 |
| 2026-01-01 | Done | 10 |