# Cycle Time Calculator from WIP and Throughput - Kanera > Calculate average cycle time from the cards in progress and your weekly throughput, and see how much WIP to cut or throughput to add to hit a target. Free, based on Little’s Law. Canonical page: https://www.kanera.app/tools/cycle-time-calculator Free tool # Cycle time calculator. How long a card takes once it is started. Count the cards currently in progress and how many the team finishes in a week. Little's Law turns that into the average time a card spends between start and done, and shows what has to change to hit a target. ## Your numbers Cards in progress right now Everything started and not yet done, including blocked and waiting cards. Cards finished per week Average of the last 6 to 8 weeks. Working days per week Target cycle time (days, optional) 10 working days per card 2 weeks on the calendar. With 10 cards in progress and 5 finishing a week, each card waits or is worked on for about 10 days. ## Cycle time from two numbers you already have Cycle time is how long a piece of work takes from the moment someone starts it to the moment it is done. Measuring it directly means timestamping every card, which is worth doing, but Little's Law gives the average from two counts anyone can take today: how many cards are in progress and how many finish per week. The identity is cycle time = WIP ÷ throughput . Ten cards in progress and five finishing a week means each card takes two weeks on average, whether or not it feels that way from the inside. ### What the number tells you If it is longer than stakeholders expect, the board is carrying too much. Most of that time is waiting, not working: cards sit in review, blocked, or parked behind something more urgent. The fastest fix is to stop starting and finish what is open. ### What it does not tell you The average hides the spread. Two teams with a ten-day average can have very different worst cases. Once the average is under control, look at the 85th percentile of individual card times, which is what the throughput forecast tool is built around. ## Flow metric questions What is Little’s Law? For any stable process, average work in progress equals throughput multiplied by average cycle time. It holds regardless of what the work is, as long as the measurements cover the same period and use the same units. The WIP limit and cycle time calculators are rearrangements of that identity. Do I count blocked and waiting cards as work in progress? Yes. Anything that has been started and is not yet done is in progress from the customer’s point of view, and it is the waiting time that inflates cycle time. Counting only cards someone is actively typing on gives a flattering but wrong answer. How many weeks of data do I need? Six to eight weeks is a reasonable minimum for an average. Fewer and a single good or bad week dominates. If the team or the way work is sliced changed recently, start counting from the change. Where do I get throughput from Kanera? The Work Done view lists completed cards by date for a board or a whole workspace. Table view can group by completion week and export the counts to Excel. ## More free tools [When will it be done? Paste your weekly throughput and a backlog size. A Monte Carlo simulation gives you a finish date with 50, 85, and 95 percent confidence. Open tool](https://www.kanera.app/tools/throughput-forecast)[WIP limit calculator Pick a work-in-progress limit from your throughput and the cycle time you want, using Little's Law. Open tool](https://www.kanera.app/tools/wip-limit-calculator)[Throughput calculator Calculate the completion rate needed to sustain your WIP at a target cycle time, using Little’s Law. Open tool](https://www.kanera.app/tools/throughput-calculator) [All free tools](https://www.kanera.app/tools) ## Measure it instead of estimating it. Kanera keeps a Work Done history and card-level activity, so throughput and cycle time come from what actually happened on the board. [Start free](https://board.kanera.app/signup)[See reporting](https://www.kanera.app/features) No card required, 30-day Pro trial, free plan available after it ## Machine-readable resources - [Kanera AI index](https://www.kanera.app/llms.txt) - [Kanera documentation index](https://www.kanera.app/docs/llms.txt) - [Agent discovery guidance](https://www.kanera.app/agents.md)