<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=1110556&amp;fmt=gif">
Skip to content
Meet Our Experts Customize My Content Contact Us
      December 7, 2022

      Understanding Cumulative Flow Diagrams

      Written by: Michelle Kerby

      Communicate Accurate Decision-Making Stories Through Data

      Rally serves as a central hub to unify the enterprise. Hundreds of global teams collaborate, plan, prioritize, and track work on a synchronized cadence. With Rally, teams visualize their work as lists, boards, or timeline views. More importantly, they also now understand how their day-to-day work aligns with the greater goals of the business.

      Rally’s unique ability to aggregate information and provide visibility into global cross-team tasks, dependencies, and risk empowers the organization to make fast, confident decisions that get better results. Rally empowers and enables people to bring data into every conversation, driving decisions both big and small.

      When the data present decision-making stories, stakeholders can confidently prioritize product strategy related to development. The organizations who adopt value stream management reach a state of evolution that celebrates survival of the fastest reality.

      Get to Know Cumulative Flow Diagrams and How to Interpret the Data in the CFD Correctly

      In our recent agile analytics educational webinar series, we shared how to read and interpret data from cumulative flow diagrams (CFDs).

      These diagrams are an excellent way to visualize multiple flow metrics in one chart. CFDs help you understand the state of work over a time period such as a single iteration. With CFDs, you can see the state of work and how long everything takes to be completed.

      CFDs are a critical diagnostics tool and revolutionize the way you perform retrospections.

      In the webinar, we also called out anonymous customer examples and explored what the charts tell us. We look at good CFDs, less than ideal CFDs, and even a couple CFDs that identify warning signs.

      We also show you how to get additional context for your charts by building custom dashboards that better explain what you’re looking at.

      Want to learn more about CFDs?

      If you want to learn more about CFDs, you’re in luck. We have two deeps dives into these charts to help you better understand them:

      • A CFD webinar that includes all the example diagrams and even a few questions asked by audience members.
      • An eBook on the topic, which you can find here.
      Tag(s): Value Stream Management , ValueOps , Rally

      Michelle Kerby

      Michelle brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales leadership for Fortune 500 companies. She is passionate about solving customer challenges and creating loyal evangelists. Michelle is based in Silicon Valley.

      Other resources you might be interested in

      icon
      Office Hours April 16, 2026

      Rally Office Hours: April 16, 2026

      Join Rally Office Hours to get expert tips and the latest product news. Explore new AI controls, Monte Carlo simulation for milestones, and more.

      View Recording
      icon
      Blog April 14, 2026

      Announcing AutoSys 24.2: Accelerating Operations with Self-Service Agility and Automated Security

      Learn how AutoSys 24.2 helps reduce administrative bottlenecks, minimize security risks, and accelerate incident resolution.

      Read Blog
      icon
      Blog April 10, 2026

      The Next Chapter for AutoSys: Moving Toward the Intelligent Control Plane

      Is Broadcom still investing in AutoSys? Yes! Learn about the V26 roadmap, which features MCP orchestration, AI job types, and AI-powered developer assistance.

      Read Blog
      icon
      Course April 10, 2026

      Automic Automation: Upgrading to Version 26

      This course guides you through and demonstrates the process to upgrade Automic Automation from version 24 to version 26 on a Windows platform. The Unix upgrade is virtually the same.

      Go to Training
      icon
      Course April 10, 2026

      Automic Automation: Integrated Database Maintenance

      See how Automic administrators can leverage the Integrated Database Maintenance suite to optimize their Automation Engine database for peak performance.

      Go to Training
      icon
      Office Hours April 9, 2026

      Rally Office Hours: April 9, 2026

      Discover the latest Rally product updates, including new widgets and AI controls, plus upcoming events like the Big Room Planning workshop.

      View Recording
      icon
      Course April 8, 2026

      ValueOps ConnectALL: Synchronizing Rally and Jira

      Learn how to synchronize team-level data in Jira with program-level agile data in Rally using ConnectALL.

      Go to Training
      icon
      Course April 6, 2026

      DX NetOps: Unified Collection Framework Install

      This course is designed to provide a clear, easy-to-follow guide for setting up and managing the Unified Collection Framework (UCF).

      Go to Training
      icon
      Office Hours April 2, 2026

      Rally Office Hours: April 2, 2026

      This Rally Office Hours session highlights product tips for story parenting and queries, technical Q&A on API custom fields, and updates on upcoming AI and strategic portfolio management events.

      View Recording