Efficiency Rate

Efficiency Rate measures the average number of issues completed per assignee per iteration.

Peter Van de Voorde avatar
Written by Peter Van de Voorde
Updated over a week ago

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What is Efficiency Rate?

The efficiency rate measures the average number of issues completed per assignee per iteration.

Why does Efficiency Rate matter?

Efficiency Rate serves teams by helping them to understand their relative rate of issue completion, irrespective of the size or composition of the team. In particular, this metric supports teams to understand what impact team expansion, contraction or changes to workflow process may have on the team's issue completion rate over time.

For example, you would expect that your team's efficiency rate might increase by adding more team members. Whilst you might expect the answer to be a clear and resounding 'Yes!', reality can sometimes tell a different picture. In this case, we usually see a team's efficiency rate initially decrease, showing the true cost of team expansion on a team's efficiency. This occurs as time is diverted from existing team members to support the onboarding of new team members, and new team members come up to speed and adapt to the team's way of working.

What does a 'good' Efficiency Rate look like?

Your team's Efficiency Rate is stable and strong when movement of team members in or out of the team has little impact. In this case well documented ways of working, clear accountabilities and issue handover points in the workflow all contribute to forming a stable and strong way of working as a team, rather than the rock star performance of a single team member.

As for the 'number' itself, your team's context will determine that for you. For example, your Efficiency Rate might be lower because your way of working dictates that you assign larger, more complex items for completion per interval.

How does TeamX measure Efficiency Rate?

Efficiency Rate is measured by the total number of issues completed in an interval, divided by the total number of assignees in the interval. It is presented as a count of issues or unit of estimate completed.

What drives your Efficiency Rate?

Your efficiency rate is being driven by:

  • The number of issues in your interval.

  • The number of business days in the interval.

  • The number of assignees.

  • Number of issues added mid interval.

  • Issue description changes.

  • Issue title changes.

  • Issues completed.

  • Issues removed mid interval.

  • Acceptance criteria changes during the interval.

Tips for improving your Efficiency Rate.

Use TeamX's charts to zoom out over time and spot where your Efficiency Rate has been at its highest, and lowest. For the selected intervals, what are the patterns regarding the number of issues assigned to those intervals, and the size of the issues? Were there an uncharacteristically large number of team meetings that may have held your rate lower than usually? Equally, was there clear issue definition that supported and maintained momentum, limiting scope changes mid-interval? Where there any changes to the team's composition that may have had an impact?

All of these questions are here to help you define and optimise a workflow that best supports your unique context, removes key-man dependencies and maximises how effectively your team can complete assigned issues.

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