What is Work Item Age? Getting started with flow metrics
- 55 Degrees
- Jul 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 4
Work Item Age is the elapsed time since the work item started. Work Item Age is one of four key flow metrics along with Cycle Time, Throughput, and WIP (aka work in progress).
Work Item Age is, arguably, the most important flow metric because controlling age can result in significantly higher levels of predictability. In short, if you can only measure and manage one thing, make it Work Item Age.
In simpler terms, Work Item Age is the elapsed time an open ticket has been waiting or working since it began. Every active item has an age, which grows day by day until the item is finished. Once the work is done, that item’s age stops accumulating (and essentially becomes its Cycle Time).
How do you calculate Work Item Age?
To begin calculating Work Item Age, you need to have a defined process with two specific points identified:
Your Start Line – or the point in your process in which items are considered started
Your Finish Line – or the point in your process in which items are considered complete
When you have those points defined, you can identify your WIP as they will be the work items between those two points.
You measure the age of each work item in your WIP using the following calculation:
(Now – Start TU) + 1 TU stands for Time Unit. You can use any granularity you'd like: seconds, minutes, hours, days or more. Why do we add 1?
The “+1” ensures that if something started this morning and it’s still in progress now, we count today as one day of age. Every new day an item remains unfinished, its age increases by 1.
Importantly, Work Item Age includes all the waiting time, just like Cycle Time does. It doesn’t matter if a task has been sitting idle over the weekend or blocked by a dependency – that time still counts in its age.
If a story was started 5 days ago, its age is 5 days (assuming we measure in calendar days and add the inclusive day count). We calculate it similarly to Cycle Time, using today as the “end” since the work isn’t finished yet.
For example, if a task moved to “In Progress” on October 1 and today is October 10, its Work Item Age would be (Oct 10 – Oct 1) + 1 = 10 days.
Why Work Item Age Matters
Work Item Age is arguably the most important flow metric for teams focused on improving their delivery. Why? Because it deals with the here and now – it highlights work that is currently in progress and potentially at risk of taking too long. Cycle Time and Throughput are lagging indicators (they look at completed work), but Work Item Age is a leading indicator. It gives you an early warning when something is languishing.
Age is by far the most crucial metric to track, since controlling age can dramatically improve your predictability. If you manage only one thing, manage the age of your work items.
Consequences of Aging Work
Think of Work Item Age as a “staleness” gauge. The longer a task lingers unfinished, generally the harder it becomes to finish. Team members lose context, assumptions go stale, and inertia sets in. By tracking age, you can prevent tasks from quietly rotting on your board.
It brings visibility to items that might otherwise be forgotten until it’s too late. Studies have shown that keeping Work Item Age low tends to result in lower overall Cycle Times and more reliable delivery forecasts.
In other words, managing aging work directly improves your team’s speed and predictability. You’ll finish work faster and with fewer surprises at the end.
There’s also a psychological aspect: a ticket that has been “In Progress” for 15 days when most finish in 5 is a big red flag. It prompts the team to ask, “Why is this taking so long? What’s blocking it?” Those conversations are exactly what you need to unblock issues or decide if you should pull the plug or get help.
Getting Started
Work Item Age is important to track for any team who wants to become more predictable. At its core, Work Item Age is a process improvement metric. When you see items aging more than expected, you can experiment with tactics to see if they help. There is no single fix but common tactics include limiting WIP, controlling work item size, reducing dependencies, and more.
Tracking Work Item Age helps you spot stalled or slow-moving work before it becomes a problem. Use it during these key events to keep your flow healthy and your delivery on track:
During daily scrums / stand-ups to highlight items that are aging or stalled - transition to ask “what’s not moving?” instead of just “what are you working on?”
In retrospectives, review items that aged unusually long and why
During SAFe team syncs or ART syncs to flag aging work at risk of breaching SLAs or SLEs
When preparing for release readiness to identify aging features or stories still incomplete
In incident response workflows, to monitor if critical bug fixes or support tickets are aging
During risk reviews or dependency checks in cross-team planning
Whenever an item sits in one status longer than your team’s typical Cycle Time
Once you manage Work Item Age, your Cycle Time data should stabilize and make forecasting easier!
Ready to get started with flow metrics?
This guide walks you through what to measure, how to get your team aligned, and how to build a case for change that your stakeholders will actually care about.
It’s time to shift from intuition-driven to insight-driven delivery.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you track your flow metrics and improve your process, try out ActionableAgile for free. Don’t forget to reach out if you’re interested in joining our customer success program!