Throughput
The number of work items a team completes in a given period, used as a flow metric alongside or instead of story-point-based velocity.
What it means
Throughput is not part of the Scrum Guide; it is a lean and Kanban metric that counts finished items directly rather than relying on relative size estimates like story points.
Teams practicing #NoEstimates often prefer throughput over velocity, since it avoids the overhead and gaming risk of estimation while still supporting forecasting through techniques like Monte Carlo simulation.
Common mistakes
Throughput is most reliable when items are similarly sized; highly variable item sizes make raw item counts less predictive on their own.
Example
The team completed 14 items last Sprint and 12 the Sprint before, giving a fairly stable throughput for forecasting.