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The customer question "How long to complete?" is best answered by the flow metric known as Cycle Time. The customer question "How many new features am I going to get in the next release?" is a question best answered by the flow metric known as Throughput. The last of the three, Work In Progress (WIP), does not directly answer any particular customer question, but it is the metric that will most greatly influence the other two.

Sometimes it is better to do a bad job of measuring something important than a good job of measuring something irrelevant.

"If a metric does not offer predictive power, then capturing that metric is waste."

I've experienced firsthand the power to influence decisions using metrics. I've gotten budget and headcount approvals and agreement to pursue one direction over another because of metrics.

When a measure directs our attention one way, it has to be taking it away from something else. All quantitative metrics are simplifications of the world and therefore need keeping in context. They have an important place alongside, but not instead of, our rich qualitative understanding of the world and the human experience within

A focus on flow necessitates not only a shift in thinking (away from capacity utilization and estimation and planning) but also a shift in the quantities used to evaluate process performance (away from ideal hours, level of effort, points, velocity, etc.)