Cycle time trend chart

The Cycle Time Trend Chart shows how delivery times change over sprints or time intervals. It visualizes percentiles such as Median (50%), 85%, and 95%, helping teams understand whether their delivery process - from work start (Cycle time) or from creation (Lead time) - is becoming faster, more stable, or more variable.

It helps you answer questions such as:

• How has our delivery speed evolved across recent sprints?

• Is our process becoming more predictable or fluctuating over time?

• What are the typical (median) and slower (85%, 95%) completion times?

• How often do we exceed our target delivery time or SLA?

• Are recent workflow or capacity changes improving delivery performance?

How to read the chart

In the example above, the chart shows the cycle time trend (1️⃣) for the work items completed (2️⃣) within the last six sprints (3️⃣). Each line represents a percentile - Median (4️⃣), 85% (5️⃣), and 95% (6️⃣) - showing how delivery time changes from sprint to sprint.

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The team’s median cycle time remains stable at around 2 days (7️⃣), indicating consistent throughput for most work items. However, the 85th and 95th percentiles fluctuate noticeably, especially peaking in Sprint 78 (8️⃣), which suggests that a small number of issues took significantly longer to complete during that period. This may point to temporary bottlenecks, blockers, or unusually complex tasks.