Weekly Cycle Time Trend(2.7.9)

A stable average cycle time can hide a dangerous trend: the slowest project getting progressively slower. This visual tracks the portfolio average next to the worst single project's P90 so you can see not just overall speed, but whether delay is concentrating somewhere.

A rising worst-project P90 with a stable average is one of the clearest early warning signs of SLA drift. It means most projects still deliver at a normal pace, while somewhere a subset of issues is taking disproportionately long — and will eventually surface as missed commitments or compliance failures.

What you can conclude

• A rising worst-project P90 alongside a stable average signals tail risk concentrating — identify and address the outlier issues before they compound.
• Both lines declining together indicates genuine delivery improvement across the board.
• A spike in both lines in a specific week often correlates with a sprint disruption, a team change, or a particularly complex batch of issues.

How this chart works

Dual time-series line chart showing the weekly average cycle time (solid blue line; weighted by each project's delivered issues, which makes it exact) and the worst single project's P90 that week (dashed amber line; an exact maximum). Per-project medians cannot be combined into a portfolio median, which is why the trend plots the average. A secondary bar shows the number of issues delivered each week for context on sample reliability. Days whose closures were all discards appear with zero completions and a nonzero abandoned count, so the axis does not silently thin out. Use the project and date filters to track specific teams.