Do You Know Your Throughput?

How Knowing What You Use Can Help You Plan Better—At Home and Work

The start of a new year always feels like a chance to reflect on where we are and make plans for where we want to be—whether it's about spending more time with friends, hitting the next promotion, or just getting through your daily to-do list a little more smoothly. One of the most underrated ways to get there? Understanding your throughput.

Throughput is a measure of how much "stuff" flows through a system in a given amount of time. It could be how many gallons of milk your family drinks each week or how many pull requests your engineering team merges during a sprint. Getting a handle on throughput might seem simple, but it is incredibly powerful—it lets you plan smarter, spot trends, and make decisions based on facts instead of guesswork.

For instance, in my house, we used to go through 15 gallons of milk a month- parenting growing boys! While there are a bunch of groceries that these boys are scarfing down, one that I try to stay on top of is knowing that we're eating three pounds of apples a week. Because I know this, when I'm planning what needs to go on the grocery list, I don’t have to stress about whether we are going to run out of apples before my next grocery run. I can consider: how many apples do we have? and when do I plan to go to the grocery next? I can just plan ahead and focus on other things.

But this idea isn’t just for grocery shopping or at home. Let’s take a closer look at how throughput can help you at work.

Throughput in Action

Once you start looking, you’ll notice throughput everywhere. At a factory, it might be how many widgets get made in an hour. On a marketing team, it could be the number of campaigns launched each quarter. The magic of understanding throughput is that it turns vague hunches into concrete numbers.

Take developer throughput. One common way to measure it is by tracking how many pull requests (PRs) your engineering team merges in a sprint. Say your team usually merges 50 PRs every two weeks. If that number suddenly drops to 30, it’s a sign to dig deeper. Are the tasks harder than usual? Are requirements unclear? Knowing your throughput doesn’t just measure productivity—it shows where there’s room to improve.

Or think about customer support. If your team closes 100 tickets a week but the backlog is still growing, it’s obvious the current setup can’t keep up. Maybe it’s time to hire more people or automate routine questions.

And then there’s sales throughput—how many deals get closed in a quarter. If your sales team usually lands 30 deals but only closed 20 in the last quarter, you know there’s an issue. It might be worth checking if the leads coming in are high quality or if the team’s onboarding process needs a boost.

Why Throughput Matters

So, why bother paying attention to throughput? It can help you in three big ways: planning better, staying aligned with goals, and spotting trends early.

Smarter Planning

Throughput gives you the data you need to plan realistically. If your family eats three pounds of apples a week, you know how much to buy—no more emergency grocery runs. The same goes for work. If your content team writes five blog posts a month, you can probably aim for six with some adjustments. But jumping to 10? That’s a recipe for burnout.

Staying Aligned with Goals

Throughput keeps the day-to-day connected to the bigger picture. Let’s say your product team ships one new feature per sprint. If your quarterly goal is four big customer-requested features, that pace works perfectly. Knowing your throughput ensures you’re not overpromising or underdelivering.

Spotting Trends

The real value of throughput shows up when you track it over time. If your marketing team’s weekly throughput of ad campaigns drops from five to three, you’ve got an early warning sign. Maybe the team is overwhelmed or a process is slowing things down. Catching these trends lets you step in before small issues become big problems.

Making Throughput Work for You

Throughput isn’t just a measure—it’s a way to make your life easier. Here’s how you can start using it today:

Find Your Baseline

First, figure out what your current numbers are. How much are you or your team producing right now?

Example: If your team resolves 5 bugs every sprint, that’s your baseline. Use it to set realistic goals or find areas where you can work more efficiently.

Make Small Improvements

Throughput doesn’t have to be perfect—small tweaks add up over time.

Example: Your engineering team merges 20 PRs a week. By adding pair programming or better tools for code reviews, you might bump that number to 22 without completely changing how you work. That's a 10% improvement!

Connect Throughput to What Matters

It’s not about doing more—it’s about doing what matters. Use throughput to tie daily tasks to bigger goals.

Example: If your operations team processes 200 invoices a week, getting that up to 250 could help hit your quarterly goal for faster payments.

A Closer Look: Engineering Throughput

Developer throughput is a great example of why this all works. Tracking how many pull requests your team merges gives you a quick sense of their productivity. But the real power comes from the context behind those numbers.

Let’s say it takes three days to merge a PR. By automating some testing or speeding up code reviews, you could cut that to a day. That means faster throughput and more time for developers to focus on the fun, creative parts of coding.

Of course, throughput isn’t everything. A team might merge 50 PRs in a sprint, but if those PRs don’t move the needle for the product, the number alone doesn’t mean much. That’s why it’s helpful to pair throughput with other metrics, like deployment frequency or the time it takes to ship meaningful changes. As one of the smartest engineering leaders I've ever worked with likes to remind folks: Velocity is made up of speed and direction.

Why Throughput Matters

Throughput isn’t just about numbers. It’s a way to bring clarity to the chaos of life and work. Knowing how much your family eats or how much your team produces helps you plan smarter, act faster, and focus on what matters.

So, what’s your throughput? Whether it’s apples, ad campaigns, or pull requests, take a moment to figure it out. You might be surprised at how much easier things get when you do.