Metrics and queries for project planning

The planning questions

Question	Metric
Will we finish by the date?	Burndown, velocity
Is scope growing?	Scope change / added work
How much can we take on?	Velocity over several iterations
Where is work stuck?	Cumulative flow diagram

Velocity honestly

Velocity is a planning input, not a performance score. The moment it becomes a target, estimates inflate and the number stops predicting anything — the measure has been optimised instead of the outcome.

Use several iterations, not one. A single sprint's velocity is noise.

Cumulative flow

A cumulative flow diagram shows how many items sit in each state over time. A widening band means work is entering a state faster than it leaves — the queue is growing, and the widening band names exactly which state to look at.

Queries

Azure Boards queries come in three shapes:

Query type	Returns
Flat list	Matching work items
Work items and direct links	Items plus their immediate links
Tree of work items	Parent–child hierarchy

Charts are built on queries, so a dashboard is only as good as the query beneath it — and a query that silently drops a work item type will show a chart that is confidently wrong.

Primary sources