Guide: Tracking Delivery

The Pipeline View

The pipeline shows how requirements flow through each stage of delivery. At a glance, you can answer: Are we ready to ship?

Stage	What It Tells You
PRD	Are requirements defined and confirmed?
Design	Are UI/UX designs complete?
Engineering	Has development been planned?
Dev	Has implementation been completed?
QA	Has testing been completed?

For each stage, you see four numbers:

In-Scope: total requirements relevant to this stage
Available: requirements ready to be worked on (not blocked by a previous stage)
Completed: requirements that have passed this stage
Progress %: percentage complete

Reading the Pipeline

Here's how to interpret it in practice:

"We have 12 requirements. PRD shows 12/12 confirmed, Design shows 10/12 completed, Engineering shows 3/12 planned."

This tells you: the PM is done, design is nearly done, and engineering is just getting started. The team's bottleneck is engineering planning. Design is waiting to hand off the remaining 2, and only 3 requirements are ready for developers to pick up.

Spotting Bottlenecks

The pipeline includes a Sankey diagram that visualizes how requirements flow between stages. Look for:

Wide bands at one stage narrowing at the next: work is piling up. That stage needs more attention or resources.
Even flow across stages: healthy progress, the team is working in parallel effectively.
Everything stuck at "Not Started": the project hasn't moved past planning yet.

Stage Completion

Beyond the requirement-level pipeline, each stage has a high-level completion indicator:

Stage	Complete When
PRD	Problem, users, solution, and success criteria are documented
Product Spec	All requirements are confirmed or out of scope
UI/UX	All designs are "completed" or "not needed"
Engineering	All requirements are "planned" or later
Development	All requirements have been developed
QA	All requirements have been tested

This gives stakeholders the top-down view ("are we done with design?") while the pipeline gives the team the bottom-up detail ("which specific requirements still need design?").

Bug Health

The project's bug tracker shows aggregate stats:

Total bugs reported
Breakdown by status (Open, In Progress, Closed, Not a Bug)

A high number of open bugs late in the project signals quality risk. Zero bugs might mean QA hasn't started yet, or the project is in great shape. Context matters.

Blocker Health

Unresolved blockers, especially high-severity ones, are the clearest signal that a project isn't ready to move forward. Check:

Total blockers by severity (High, Medium, Low)
How many are still Open vs. Answered vs. Resolved

If you're a PM or lead, make resolving High-severity blockers a priority before the team starts building.

For detailed reference on how pipeline metrics are calculated, see Pipeline Tracking.