Skip to main content
Language Selector

  1. Other Languages

    (machine translation)

Planview Customer Success Center

Engineering Manager

  1. Last updated
  2. Save as PDF

The Engineering Manager's Guide to Flow Methodology

This comprehensive guide is designed to help you harness the power of Flow Methodology to take your team to the next level. 

In the following sections and pages, you'll learn how to leverage Flow Methodology, in tandem with Planview Viz and Planview Hub, to maximize your impact and drive transformative change within your organization.

Here is what Engineering Managers are saying:

  • Viz is sufficient, on its own, to project work completion times.".

  • Viz helps us identify and rectify problems very quickly.

  • Viz is the tool I have been looking for my entire career.

  • Viz prompts the right conversations with my team leads.

 

What is Flow Methodology?

Planview's Flow Methodology is a powerful set of practices designed to optimize value streams and achieve optimal flow. This comprehensive set of practices seamlessly integrates with your existing ways of working, eliminating the need to overhaul your entire framework. 

By adopting this methodology, you will not only optimize your value streams but also equip yourself with the skills to excel as a leader and accelerate your professional growth.

Elevate your Leadership

  • Improve delivery speed and quality

  • Remove impediments to productivity

  • Reduce voluntary talent attrition

  • Create a culture of continuous improvement and empowerment

  • Build trust and encourage transparency within the team

  • Safely experiment in team structure and processes

  • Easily build the business case for investment in people and technology

Accelerate your Professional Growth

  • Develop a business and outcome-oriented mindset 

  • Build credibility with leadership

  • Attract and retain top talent on your team

  • Share and illustrate good practices with peers

  • Strengthen your mentoring skills

  • Demonstrate problem-solving skills

 

 

Recommended Practices

Explore the table below to uncover recommended practices tailored to your role.

Cadence Practice
Daily
  • Refrain from introducing new work that exceeds the previous period's Flow Velocity.
  • Collaborate with teams to prioritize the completion of aging work while accommodating new work requests and priority changes that arise.
Weekly
  • Utilize the 85th Percentile metric to set realistic expectations with stakeholders about work completion timelines. 
Bi-Weekly
  • Review Flow Metrics, Insights, bottlenecks and Business Results. 
  • Discuss whether you’d made the right tradeoffs as represented in Flow Distribution®. 
  • Choose improvements to target during the next increment.
Monthly
  • Review your Portfolio Insights for overall value stream health and dive deeper into value streams experiencing issues.
  • For each value stream, log monthly business results (recommended on the same day of every month). Confirm you’re on track to meet targets.  
  • Monitor trends in Flow Metrics and examine bottlenecks. Evaluate the impact of your experiments on flow. 
Quarterly
  • Review previous quarter’s metrics and Business Results. 
  • Harvest success stories, share them with your team, leadership and peers. Apply learnings more broadly. 
  • Communicate your priorities for the upcoming quarter and set Flow Metrics targets accordingly. 
Ad-Hoc

During Team Lead 1x1s:

  • Come with targeted questions based on Flow Metrics to prompt richer conversations. 
  • Discuss new issues and mitigation options. 
  • Review progress towards goals.

 

Best Viz Features for your Role

  • Flow Time

    Use Flow Time to improve predictability

    Make more accurate commitments based on objective performance data.

    Learn more
  • Flow Velocity

    Use Flow Velocity® to accelerate throughput

    Help the teams focus on one important thing at a time in order to accomplish more over time.

    Learn more
  • Flow Load

    Use Flow Load® to prevent overload and improve engagement

    See when teams are becoming overloaded, overwhelmed, and disengaged.

    Learn more
  • Flow Distribution

    Illustrate tradeoffs with Flow Distribution®

    Provide visibility into what is getting delivered and the resulting tradeoffs; get more intentional about it.

    Learn more
  • Bottleneck Finder

    Find your bottlenecks

    Identify constraints and quantify their toll on efficiency; experiment safely to relieve them.

    Learn more
  • Business Results

    Track Business Results alongside flow

    Communicate targeted business goals and how you will work to achieve them.

    Learn more
  • Portfolio Insights

    Focus your attention with Portfolio Insights

    Zoom out to see whether agility is improving. Who needs help? Where are dependencies slowing down delivery?.

    Learn more
  • Timeline Events

    Tag metrics with Timeline Events

    Implement the team’s improvement ideas and track their impact on Flow and business results.

    Learn more

 

Next Steps

To assist you in this journey, we have curated the next steps you should take to highlight the most relevant sections of our Flow Methodology.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Visit the Understanding Value Stream Management page and gain a foundational knowledge on the principles and concepts behind value stream management.

 Learn how to assess the current state of your organization's Flow Maturity and identify areas for improvement.

Discover effective Flow Optimizations to resolve prevalent issues within your value stream.

As an Engineering Manager, you'll want to focus on these Flow Optimizations:

Explore Flow Techniques designed to enhance the efficient delivery of business value and optimize the achievement of desired outcomes.

As an Engineering Manager, you'll want to focus on these Flow Techniques:

Utilize pre-designed Flow Templates that provide guidance and support as you implement Planview's Flow Methodology within your organization.

As an Engineering Manager you'll want to focus on these Flow Templates: