throughput
A measure of how many items a process handles or completes.
Key Points
- Reflects how many work items flow through a process; higher values indicate more items completed.
- Commonly tracked in Kanban and other flow-based approaches to understand delivery capability.
- Affected by WIP limits, bottlenecks, team capacity, and process efficiency.
- Different from velocity (story points); throughput counts items, which aids simple forecasting.
Example
A Kanban team finishes 24 tickets in the last two weeks. Their throughput for that period is 24 items, showing how many work items the process completed.
PMP Example Question
A team wants to forecast delivery by counting how many work items are completed each week. Which metric should they use?
- Velocity
- Lead time
- Throughput
- Earned value
Correct Answer: C — Throughput
Explanation: Throughput is the count of items completed by the process in a given period, making it suitable for forecasting based on completed items.
