Flow balance
Also known as Review accumulation
Definition
Flow balance describes whether arrival, WIP, and departure remain broadly aligned under defined policies. Imbalance appears as growing queues, starved stages, or repeated bursts of completed work.
Flow balance in practice
Flow balance describes whether arrival, WIP, and departure remain broadly aligned under defined policies. Imbalance appears as growing queues, starved stages, or repeated bursts of completed work.
A concrete example
An illustrative team starts eight changes in a week but deploys only four. Implementation looks active while review and deployment states widen. The imbalance suggests inspecting downstream capacity before starting more work.
How to use the signal
Compare this measure with cycle time, throughput, work in progress, and queue time. Define the start and finish events, inspect distributions instead of relying on one average, and record the policy behind any comparison. A useful measure should lead to a specific question about flow rather than a score for an individual.
Limitations
There is no single balance score for every system. Work classes, batch releases, and intentional buffers change the pattern. Use stage-level evidence rather than a headcount comparison.
How this relates to Weave
Weave's engineering intelligence can help teams inspect delivery activity and timing around flow balance. Use those signals to find patterns and test workflow improvements, while keeping the team's work system as the source of truth for product, operational, and dependency context.
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