The Sample Path Analysis Toolkit

Analyzing macro dynamics of flow processes

Sample Path Flow Metrics
A Sample Path

Toolkit Reference Documentation

  1. Package Overview
  2. Command Line Reference
  3. Chart Reference

Background

An overview of key concepts and history of sample path analysis from our series on Little's Law at The Polaris Flow Dispatch.

Read these high level articles first before diving into the rest of the material here.

  1. The Many Faces of Little's Law
  2. A Brief History of Little's Law

Also see the Classic papers section below for canonical technical references on which this material is based.

Applications

Deeper dives into applying the concepts of sample path analysis in software development.
  1. Little's Law in a Complex Adaptive System
  2. The Causal Arrow in Little's Law
  3. How Flows Stabilize: WIP Limits and SLAs
  4. Stabilizing Flow with Timeboxes

Process Time Coherence

It is crucial to understand the difference between residence time and sojourn times and the concept of process time coherence and why it matters when analyzing the dynamics of flow processes in complex adaptive systems.

These two posts do a deep dive into these concepts. It is key to understanding why sample path analysis is effective in measuring flow in a complex system.

  1. How long does it take?
  2. What is Residence Time?

Technical Notes

Shorter technical notes.
  1. Sample path analysis is not a statistical method.

Classic Papers and References

These papers and textbooks are the canonical references to this material.

More technical, but highly recommended reading if you are interested in understanding this subject in more depth.

  1. Little's Law as viewed on its 50th Anniversary John Little.
  2. Chapter 5: Little's Law, John Little and Stephen Graves, in Building Intuition - Insights from basic operations management and principles.
  3. Sample Path Analysis of Queueing Systems, El-Taha and Stidham (PDF download available at the link).