How to Analyze Cycle Time with the Last Week Cycles Widget

The 'Last Week Cycles' widget is a powerful tool for understanding and optimizing your team's development workflow. This guide will walk you through how to navigate, interpret, and interact with the widget to identify bottlenecks and improve efficiency. For a broader understanding of what the widget is and its benefits, refer to our Understanding Last Week Cycles: Cycle Time Analysis article.

Getting Started with Last Week Cycles

1. 1. Navigate to the Widget

   From your devActivity.com dashboard, navigate to the 'Analytics' section and then select 'Work Quality'. Locate the 'Last Week Cycles' widget, which displays a stacked bar chart.

2. 2. Understand the Visualization

   

   Observe the stacked bar chart, where each bar represents a week's aggregated cycle time. The Y-axis shows 'Days' of cycle time, and the X-axis displays weekly date ranges. The widget title also shows your team's median cycle time (e.g., 'Median: 58 minutes 4 seconds').

   Pay attention to the color-coded segments within each bar:

   • Coding Time (light blue)
   • Pickup Time (medium blue)
   • Review Time (dark blue)

   These segments help you quickly identify which phase contributes most to the overall cycle time for a given week.

3. 3. Filter Your Data

   To focus your analysis, use the available filters (typically found above the widget or in the sidebar) to view cycle time data for specific teams or individual contributors. This allows for targeted performance monitoring.

4. 4. Drill Down into Weekly Data

   To investigate a week with high cycle time, click on the specific weekly bar in the chart. This action will drill down, allowing you to view cycle time details at a daily level for that selected week.

5. 5. Investigate Specific Pull Requests

   From the daily view, you can further drill down to inspect individual pull requests that contributed to the cycle time. This granular view helps you pinpoint the exact PRs that experienced extended durations.

6. 6. Perform Root Cause Analysis

   Once you've identified a specific long-running pull request, devActivity allows you to navigate directly to GitHub or your relevant source-code platform. This enables you to perform a deeper investigation into why that pull request experienced an extended cycle time, reviewing its history, comments, and changes.

Common Use Cases for Cycle Time Analysis

• Identify Performance Deviations: Quickly spot weeks with unexpectedly high cycle times to investigate underlying causes.
• Pinpoint Bottlenecks: Determine if delays are primarily due to coding, waiting for review (pickup), or the review process itself.
• Monitor Trends: Track cycle time performance over time for individuals or teams to assess the impact of process improvements.
• Optimize Workflow: Use insights to implement targeted changes that reduce cycle time and improve overall development efficiency.

Tips for Optimizing Cycle Time

• Address Pickup Time: If pickup time is high, consider strategies like clearer PR descriptions, dedicated review rotations, or smaller PR sizes.
• Streamline Review Process: For long review times, look into improving feedback clarity, reducing review cycles, or ensuring reviewers have sufficient context.
• Support Developers: If coding time is consistently high, investigate potential blockers, resource constraints, or knowledge gaps.