All glossary terms
Optimize
Throughput
Throughput is the count of work items completed per unit of time (typically per week or per sprint). Unlike velocity (which is points-based and team-specific), throughput uses raw story count and is comparable across teams of similar story-sizing discipline.
Throughput is a sibling metric to lead time. Both come from Little's Law: throughput × lead time = work-in-progress. Improving throughput without reducing scope means more parallel work, which often increases lead time. The healthier move is splitting stories smaller (each story → more throughput) and reducing context switches (lower WIP per engineer). Most teams chronically over-WIP by 2-3x what's healthy.