Kanban Flow & Cycle Time Review

Template Overview

Continuous delivery teams thrive on predictable flow rather than arbitrary sprint boundaries. The Kanban Flow & Cycle Time Review template enables agile teams to analyze work-in-progress (WIP) constraints, track cycle time distributions, and eliminate queue waste across the software engineering pipeline.

Markdown Template Structure

Copy the block below or click Download .md File to add this template directly to your personal vault:

---
title: "Kanban Flow Review: [Team Name] - [Period]"
date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
team: "[[Platform Engineering Team]]"
facilitator: "[[Agile Coach / Delivery Lead]]"
review_cadence: "Bi-Weekly Flow Retrospective"
median_cycle_time: "[X.X Days]"
tags: [kanban, cycle-time, flow, agile, metrics, continuous-delivery]
---

# Kanban Flow & Cycle Time Review — [Team Name]

## 1. Flow Metrics & Throughput Dashboard
- **Median Cycle Time (85th Percentile):** 3.8 days (down from 4.6 days last review).
- **Throughput:** 24 completed work items delivered to production over the past 14 days.
- **Current Active WIP Count:** 9 items across 5 developers (Target WIP Ceiling: <=8).

## 2. Board Column Aging & Bottleneck Analysis
| Kanban Column | Target WIP Limit | Current WIP Count | Oldest Item Age | Observed Bottleneck |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Specification | 3 | 2 | 4 Days | Clean |
| In Development | 4 | 5 | 8 Days | Complex audio buffer refactor stalled |
| In Code Review | 2 | 1 | 1 Day | Fast reviewer turnaround |
| In Verification | 2 | 1 | 2 Days | Staging environment stable |

## 3. Aging Work Item Deep-Dives
- **Item #382 (Local SQLite Cache Serialization):**
  - *Root Cause of Stagnation:* Ambiguity around multi-thread SQLite write locks under high load.
  - *Remediation Strategy:* Pair two senior engineers tomorrow morning to resolve database thread pool contention.

## 4. Flow Policy Adjustments
- [ ] Enforce strict WIP limit of 4 on the **In Development** column; no developer may pull a new ticket until blocked items are cleared.
- [ ] Implement automated alert for any pull request remaining unreviewed after 24 business hours.
- [ ] Review cycle time distribution at the next bi-weekly flow sync.

Filled Real-World Example

Here is a realistic example demonstrating how this template captures actual deliberations:

---
title: "Kanban Flow Review: Audio Pipeline Team"
date: 2026-10-09
team: "[[Audio Pipeline Team]]"
facilitator: "[[Sarah Sterling]]"
median_cycle_time: "2.4 Days"
tags: [kanban, cycle-time, flow, agile]
---

# Kanban Flow & Cycle Time Review — Audio Pipeline

## 1. Metrics Overview
Sarah Sterling reviewed the cycle time scatterplot. 85% of all audio processing tickets completed within 2.4 days. The team maintained a steady throughput of 14 tickets per week.

## 2. Policy Tuning
The team agreed to reduce the **In Code Review** column limit from 4 to 2, ensuring that engineers prioritize reviewing peer pull requests before picking up new implementation tickets.

When to Use and When to Avoid

When to Use

• Use during regular Kanban flow and continuous delivery retrospectives.
• Use to diagnose software delivery bottlenecks, pull request stagnation, and excessive work-in-progress.
• Use to align engineering teams around objective throughput and cycle time data.

When to Avoid

• Avoid using for traditional fixed-scope waterfall project milestone gates.
• Avoid using as an individual developer productivity stack-ranking metric.

On-Device AI Integration

Summarize your recording in Oyma with this local instruction:

Analyze the Kanban flow review audio recording:
1. Extract key flow metrics including median cycle time, throughput volume, and current WIP counts.
2. Summarize bottleneck analyses across board columns and identify specific aged tickets discussed.
3. Itemize agreed flow policy changes and WIP limit modifications.
Output in clean, structured Markdown.

Your data remains securely on your Mac with zero cloud exposure.