What is Throughput?
Throughput is the count of work items finished per time period — ten stories a week, forty tickets a month. With WIP and cycle time it forms flow metrics' core triangle (Little's law binds them), and it forecasts probabilistically: "based on 8–12 items/week, this 60-item scope lands in 5–8 weeks" beats any promised date built on hope.
Its integrity rule: count only finished items. Started work is inventory, and inventory is the opposite of throughput.
Formula
Throughput = items completed ÷ time period (Little's law: WIP = throughput × cycle time)
Worked example
A platform team's last twelve weeks: 7, 9, 8, 11, 6, 9, 10, 8, 9, 7, 10, 9 items — stable around 8.6. Asked when a 70-item initiative will finish, the lead runs the distribution: 85% confidence within 9 weeks. No estimation meeting, no padded promise — just the team's own history doing the forecasting, and it's more accurate than every planning session that preceded it.