Prioritize your overdue pull requests and issues with automated tracking that helps identify planning, workload, or capacity challenges. Keypup's Overdue Items Metric provides real-time visibility into items that have passed their due dates, enabling teams to address bottlenecks and maintain delivery momentum.

Understand the Overdue Items Metric

The overdue items metric provides a count of pull requests and issues still open after their due dates, offering clear insights into delivery health and team capacity.

Key Benefits of Tracking Overdue Items

  • Early bottleneck detection: Identify systemic problems such as review bottlenecks, seasonal team shortages, or underestimated complexity before they impact delivery.
  • Capacity insights: Understand whether your development capacity aligns with objectives set by product or leadership teams.
  • Delivery health monitoring: Track whether your team is maintaining pace or falling behind on scheduled work.

Interpreting Your Overdue Items Metric

Understanding what your metric indicates helps drive appropriate action:

  • KPI shows 0: All items are currently on time. Consider increasing output if this consistently remains at zero.
  • KPI occasionally shows 0-5 items: A few items are late. Investigate whether this indicates a systemic problem, seasonal issue, or isolated complexity challenge.
  • KPI consistently shows 5+ items: Deliveries are systematically late. This may result from clearing a large backlog or indicate the team needs time to regroup and process outstanding tasks.
  • KPI shows 5+ items and rising: The delivery team is not following the pace set by product or leadership. Current capacity likely cannot meet objectives, and priorities need revisiting.

Strategies to Improve Overdue Items Management

Implement these practices to maintain healthy delivery schedules:

  • Start small and scale: Begin with a manageable delivery throughput and increase it over time based on team capacity.
  • Limit work in progress: Control how many items or story points you schedule at a time to prevent overload.
  • Maintain consistent sizing: Ensure issues are relatively consistent in size for easier backlog monitoring.
  • Establish clear ownership: Implement an adequate prioritization process with a designated owner such as team lead, project manager, product manager, or engineering leadership.

Enhance Delivery Predictability

Combine this metric with unaddressed overdue pull requests insights to drill down to details and take targeted action. By diligently managing due dates and overdue items, your team can improve estimation accuracy, prioritization effectiveness, and scheduling precision, leading to enhanced efficiency and productivity.