The Flow Overview category answers how is my system doing right now. It collects the at-a-glance tiles: a handful of numbers you can read in seconds, each with a status indicator and — where it makes sense — a trend indicator comparing the selected range to the period before it.

The Predictability Score tile also lives in this category. It is documented with its detail chart on the Predictability page.

WIP Overview

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric WIP
Affected by Filtering Yes — snapshot as of selected end date

This widget shows the total number of items currently in progress based on the states you configured as Doing.

WIP Overview

If a System WIP Limit is configured for the Team or Portfolio, the widget visualizes that goal and colors the value accordingly.

Use the View Data button to open the full list of in-progress items that currently contribute to the count.

Status Indicator

Status Condition
🔴 Act No System WIP Limit is configured, or current WIP exceeds the limit.
🟡 Observe WIP is below the limit (capacity is available).
🟢 Sustain WIP exactly matches the System WIP Limit.

Blocked Overview

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Work Item Age
Affected by Filtering Yes — snapshot as of selected end date

This widget shows how many items were blocked on the last day of the selected range. The status is driven by the count of blocked items — the target is always zero, so even a single blocked item raises a warning. It also shows a previous-period trend (see Trend Indicators).

Blocked Overview

The target is always zero blocked items. Use the View Data button to see all currently blocked items.

The blocked count is a snapshot as of the last day of the selected date range. On a range ending today that is the current blocked state.

For both Teams and Portfolios, a historical range is answered from blocked-transition history — “was this item blocked then” — rather than from today’s tags and state, so an item (or feature) unblocked since is not retroactively reported as blocked. Items and features that predate blocked-history capture fall back to the live rule, which is the only answer available for them.

The trend indicator compares against the previous period of the selected date range (see Trend Indicators).

Status Indicator

Status Condition
🔴 Act No blocked indicators are configured, or 2 or more items are blocked.
🟡 Observe Exactly 1 item is blocked.
🟢 Sustain No items are blocked.

Stale Items Overview

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Work Item Age
Affected by Filtering Yes — snapshot as of selected end date

This widget shows how many in-progress items had been sitting in their current state longer than the configured staleness threshold — items that may be silently stuck even though no one flagged them.

Stale Items Overview

The staleness threshold (in days) is configured in your Team or Portfolio settings. Blocked items are not counted here — they are reported by the Blocked Overview instead, so a single item is never counted as both blocked and stale. The target is always zero stale items. Use the View Data button to see all currently stale items.

Staleness is measured against the last day of the selected date range, not against today. On a historical range an item that sat still is judged by how long it had been still on that end date, so closing a range in the past no longer makes everything in it read as stale.

Status Indicator

Status Condition
🔴 Act No staleness threshold is configured, or 2 or more items are stale.
🟡 Observe Exactly 1 item is stale.
🟢 Sustain No items are stale.

Features Worked On Overview

Applies to Teams only
Flow Metric WIP
Affected by Filtering Yes — snapshot as of selected end date

This widget shows how many parent features currently have at least one child item in progress.

Features Worked On Overview

The team’s Feature WIP is visualized as a goal on the widget.

The number is based on parent items that are actively being worked on. It does not matter whether the parent feature is in To Do, Doing, or Done.

This metric is only available for Teams.

Status Indicator

Status Condition
🔴 Act No Feature WIP is configured, or the number of features being worked on exceeds the limit.
🟡 Observe Fewer features are being worked on than the Feature WIP limit.
🟢 Sustain Feature count exactly matches the Feature WIP limit.

Total Work Item Age

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Work Item Age, WIP
Affected by Filtering Yes — snapshot as of selected end date (Widget), Yes (Chart)

The Total Work Item Age widget shows the cumulative age of all items currently in progress. This metric helps you understand the overall “inventory” age of your work in progress.

Total Work Item Age Widget

The widget displays a single number representing the sum of ages (in days) of all items currently in a Doing state. This gives you a quick view of your total WIP “burden” - the higher the number, the more accumulated age you’re carrying in your system.

For example, if you have:

  • Item A: 5 days old
  • Item B: 3 days old
  • Item C: 2 days old

Your Total Work Item Age would be 10 days.

The widget reports the total age as of the last day of the selected date range. On a range ending today that is the current total; on a historical range it is the total the items carried on that end date, so the number lines up with the rest of the range instead of silently jumping to today.

Status Indicator

The reference value is calculated as: System WIP Limit × SLE days. This represents the maximum acceptable total age if every in-progress item were exactly at the SLE boundary.

Status Condition
🔴 Act System WIP Limit or SLE is not configured, or the current total age already exceeds the reference value.
🟡 Observe The current total age is within the reference value, but adding today’s WIP count (one additional day of aging) would push it over.
🟢 Sustain The current total age is within the reference value and not projected to exceed it tomorrow.

Flow Efficiency

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Cycle Time, Work Item Age
Affected by Filtering Yes

Flow Efficiency is the share of time your work spends actively progressing versus waiting. A value of 100% would mean work never sat idle; in practice most systems sit far lower, and that gap is where the biggest delivery improvements usually hide.

Flow Efficiency Overview

The figure is derived from the wait states you configure: time spent in a wait state counts as waiting, all other Doing time counts as active. The same number, together with the contributing wait time highlighted on each bar, also appears on the Cumulative Time per State chart.

This widget shows Not configured until you mark at least one wait state in your Team or Portfolio settings. Without wait states there is no way to tell active time from waiting time.

Status Indicator

Unlike most widgets, a higher value is better here, so the thresholds are inverted.

Status Condition
🔴 Act No wait states are configured — the status reads Act with a define wait states in settings prompt, the same pattern used when an SLE is missing elsewhere.
🔴 Act Flow efficiency is below 40% — waiting dominates; investigate the wait states draining your value-adding time.
🟡 Observe Flow efficiency is between 40% and 60% — watch which wait states hold work the longest.
🟢 Sustain Flow efficiency is at or above 60% — a healthy balance between active and waiting time.

Cycle Time Percentiles

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Cycle Time
Affected by Filtering Yes

In this widget you can see the different percentiles of your Cycle Time. It’s to get a quick view of where you stand, for example if you want to compare it to your Service Level Expectation.

Cycle Time Percentiles

In case you have defined a Service Level Expectation, you will see the SLE on the top right.

Use the View Data button in the widget header to see all items that were closed in the respective date range. If you have defined an SLE, the Cycle Time coloring is based on how close (or above) the item got to the SLE.

Closed Items Dialog

Named Cycle Times

This is a Premium feature. It appears only once you have defined at least one named Cycle Time for the Team or Portfolio.

The default Cycle Time measures from the first Doing state to Done. That is rarely the whole story: your customer’s clock may start when the idea lands in the backlog, and your analysts may care only about the stretch from Analysing onward. A named Cycle Time lets you define those windows once and read them here.

The selector in the widget header switches which window the percentiles are computed over. Default is the regular Cycle Time and behaves exactly as before.

Named Cycle Time Percentiles

Selecting a named Cycle Time changes three things together:

  • The percentiles recompute over that definition’s window. A wider window cannot be faster than a narrower one, so expect the numbers to grow when the definition starts earlier.
  • The status indicator goes neutral. Your SLE targets the default Cycle Time — it is a single target defined against the default window. Judging a deliberately wider window against it would report a breach you never actually agreed to, so Lighthouse reports no verdict instead of a misleading red. Hover the ℹ️ icon in the widget header for the reminder.
  • View Data lists the items with a column for that named Cycle Time, showing only items that have a value for it, and draws no SLE line.

The trend indicator follows the selection too, comparing the named window against the same-length preceding period.

The selection is per-widget and not persisted: it does not affect the Cycle Time Scatterplot’s own selector, and it resets when you change the date range or reload.

If a definition later becomes invalid — for example because one of its boundary states was removed from the Team’s configuration — it is greyed out in the selector, and a selection that pointed at it falls back to Default.

Status Indicator

The status indicator applies to the Default selection. Under a named Cycle Time it is neutral, as explained above.

Status Condition
🔴 Act No SLE is configured, or no closed items exist in the range, or the percentage of items within the SLE is more than 20 percentage points below the SLE target.
🟡 Observe The percentage of items within the SLE is below the target by up to 20 percentage points.
🟢 Sustain The percentage of items within the SLE meets or exceeds the configured target percentile. Consider tightening the target.

Work Item Age Percentiles

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Work Item Age
Affected by Filtering Yes

This overview widget shows the 50th, 70th, 85th, and 95th percentiles of Work Item Age for the items that are currently in progress. Unlike Cycle Time Percentiles, which summarizes completed work, this is a live snapshot of how long your in-progress work has been ageing right now.

Work Item Age Percentiles

The same percentiles can be overlaid as reference lines on the Work Item Aging Chart via its Cycle Time / Work Item Age selector.

When no work is in progress, the widget shows an empty state instead of percentile values.

On a historical date range the widget reports the ages the items had on the last day of that range, not their age today — so a range that ends three weeks ago answers “how old was the work back then”, which is the only reading that makes the number comparable to the rest of the range.

The trend footer compares the highest configured percentile against the same-length window immediately preceding the selected range, and is labelled Highest Work Item Age Percentile to distinguish it from the widget’s own percentile list.

Status Indicator

The status bands on how many in-progress items have already outlived your Service Level Expectation, using the SLE’s day value only. Counts, not percentages: at the sizes this widget usually sees, a percentage over three or four items is noise rather than signal.

Status Condition
🔴 Act No SLE is configured, or more than one in-progress item is older than the SLE day value. Act on the oldest ones first.
🟡 Observe Exactly one item is older than the SLE day value, or one or more items sit exactly on it.
🟢 Sustain Every in-progress item is younger than the SLE day value — or nothing is in progress in this range, which is not a bad state (an empty board is already reported by the WIP Overview).

The bands deliberately do not scale with WIP: two breaching items read Act whether you are running three items or forty.

Total Throughput

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Throughput
Affected by Filtering Yes

This overview widget shows the total number of items closed in the selected date range, together with the average number closed per day.

Total Throughput

The trend indicator compares the selected date range against the immediately preceding period of the same length.

Use the View Data button to list the items closed in the selected range. For a day-by-day breakdown, use the Throughput Run Chart.

Status Indicator

Although the widget displays only closed items, its status is based on the same started-versus-closed balance logic used elsewhere in Lighthouse.

Status Condition
🔴 Act No System WIP Limit is configured, or started count exceeds closed count by more than 5%.
🟡 Observe Closed significantly exceeds started (process may be starving).
🟢 Sustain Started and closed are balanced (within 5% or an absolute difference of less than 2).

Total Arrivals

Applies to Teams and Portfolios
Flow Metric Arrivals (items started)
Affected by Filtering Yes

This overview widget shows the total number of items started in the selected date range, together with the average number started per day.

Total Arrivals

The trend indicator compares the selected date range against the immediately preceding period of the same length.

Use the View Data button to list the items started in the selected range. For day-level detail and batching patterns, use the Arrivals Run Chart.

Status Indicator

Although the widget displays only started items, its status is based on the same started-versus-closed balance logic used elsewhere in Lighthouse.

Status Condition
🔴 Act No System WIP Limit is configured, or started count exceeds closed count by more than 5%.
🟡 Observe Closed significantly exceeds started (process may be starving).
🟢 Sustain Started and closed are balanced (within 5% or an absolute difference of less than 2).

Feature Size Percentiles

Applies to Portfolios
Flow Metric Feature Size
Affected by Filtering Yes

This overview widget shows the 50th, 70th, 85th, and 95th percentiles of feature size for completed features in the selected date range. Feature size is measured as the number of child work items linked to each feature.

Feature Size Percentiles

The trend indicator compares the selected date range against the immediately preceding period of the same length. Its direction is derived from the 50th percentile, while the tooltip shows a per-percentile breakdown in previous → **current** format.

This widget is only available for Portfolios.

The displayed percentiles summarize historical feature sizes, but the status indicator evaluates your currently active features against the 85th and 70th percentile thresholds derived from those same historical sizes.

Status Indicator

Status Condition
🔴 Act At least one active (To Do or In Progress) feature has more child items than the 85th percentile size of completed features.
🟡 Observe No feature exceeds the 85th percentile, but at least one active feature has more child items than the 70th percentile size — it may grow further.
🟢 Sustain All active features are at or below the 70th percentile size, or no historical size data is available yet.

If no active features exist, the status defaults to Sustain.