Getting started with Flow

Intro

Welcome to Pluralsight Flow! We’re excited to show you everything our platform has to offer, but we understand that learning a new platform can be a bit overwhelming. So many reports, metrics, and features. Where do you even begin?

Well, right here.

In this playbook, we’ll provide you with everything you need to establish a positive culture, build a collaborative community, achieve goals, and find your flow.

Data as a force for good

Like the force in Star Wars, data can be used for both good and bad. So we’ve established some culture pillars to ensure you stay on the light side of the data.

Build your Flow Community

Whether it’s a piece of cake, the latest blockbuster movie, or a catchy new pop track—good things are meant to be shared. And there are some really good insights in Flow. So share them with your community. A good Flow community will consist of developers, engineering managers, product managers, and engineering leaders. Each person shares an ultimate goal of creating the best product possible, and Flow provides insights to help you achieve that goal.

This community can be informal, in which you just bring up Flow during your existing ceremonies like retrospectives. Or, you can create a formal group by reaching out to your manager, to your reports, or to someone in a different engineering team. If you’re new to the company, we’ve also seen success when new hires collaborate with each other.

Flow communities typically meet once a week if they’re informal, and once a month if they’re formal. Within your community, here’s what we recommend discussing, in order:

Set goals

Now that you have general ideas for goals, get metric-specific. Do you want to improve processes? Do you want to ensure your developers are getting the support they need? Do you manage a large team and just want some understanding of your engineers’ work without interrupting your engineers' flow? Think about your high-level goals, and then explore the reports to find the metrics that align with those goals.

If you’re still not sure where to get started, here are some metrics that often offer relatively quick wins:

Sprint Completion Rate

• How is your sprint planning?
• Are you prioritizing added work over planned work?
• If so, why?

Queue Time

• How much time are tickets spending in a waiting state?
• Do engineers feel overwhelmed by other work?
• Do they feel that reviews are a lower priority?

Unreviewed PRs

• Can you get this as close to zero as possible?

Choose three to five metrics to get started with, and then only track those for the first two weeks. Communicate those metrics with your team, then track progress regularly.

Validate your data and integrations

Once you know what your goals are, make sure your data in Flow is supporting you. If your integrations are connected and your users are set up correctly, it’s so much easier for you to see the data you want and get right to the insights you need.

To make sure your data stays useful, you’ll want to keep it maintained.

If you’re not seeing the data you’re expecting, check your integrations first. Make sure your integration data statuses are healthy, and check to see what data is still processing.

Keep an eye on your repository processing statuses to make sure data is coming in smoothly. As new users get added to Flow through new repositories or integrations, make sure to merge them so your data reflects accurately.

Keeping an eye on your data accuracy means it’s easier to see what matters so you can better accomplish your goals.

Not sure how to make sure Flow is configured right for you? Check out our documentation on managing your Flow settings.

Report highlight: Work Log

You don’t need to wait until you’ve accomplished your goals to see Flow’s value. Flow also helps with day-to-day operations. A clear example of that is Work Log, and you can start using it on the first day. It’s also a great report to test your Flow culture:

Improve your process

Flow can do many things. It can show you what’s going on in your development processes, and it can show you the root cause of what’s impeding or speeding up that process. But it can’t improve the process itself. That’s where you come in.

Take those three to five metrics, and consider how you can improve them. We have playbooks to get you started on engineering processes like onboarding, reviews, and cycle time, but feel free to get creative, here. Have your team play around with Flow data; what changes the data and what doesn’t? Flow also works great with your existing processes. Enhance your 1:1s, knock out your sprints with Sprint Movement, and make your team meetings efficient with Team Health Insights. The point is, no matter what you want to use Flow, we’re here to meet you where you are. We’re excited for your Flow journey, and we’re here if you get stuck or want to share an extra exciting insight.