Elapsed time is the amount of time a story has been in play, you can use it to spot which stories are taking longer than expected and act on them. Keeping your stories small and of a similar size has multiple benefits including reducing risk and increasing predictability.

Elapsed time indicates the amount of time an active story has been play while cycle time is the final time taken for a completed story. Elapsed time helps you act on a story before it starts running off of the rails.

The elapsed time indicator is calculated based on the average cycle time with colours reflecting how much the current story is deviating from average:

🟢 less than 1.1x

🟡 less than 1.6x

🟠 less than 1.9x

🔴 over 1.9x

You could act on a story that starts to deviate by:

• splitting into into smaller pieces and completing the more important ones first
• finding a simpler/faster way to achieve the goal (without compromising on other important aspects like quality)