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Role Based Path - Product Manager

This guide is for Product Managers who want a clear, data-backed view of delivery reality: what was planned, what actually shipped, and where unplanned work or workflow friction is impacting predicta…

heather.hazell
Updated by heather.hazell

This guide is for Product Managers who want a clear, data-backed view of delivery reality: what was planned, what actually shipped, and where unplanned work or workflow friction is impacting predictability. It highlights the LinearB views that help you partner effectively — especially during planning and retros.

Time Required: 8–12 minutes to orient, 20 minutes to set a repeatable cadence
Difficulty: Easy

TL;DR

  • Use Teams → Iterations (Current + Completed) to see planned vs. delivered work and scope disruption patterns.
  • Use Metrics → Delivery to understand flow health and where PR stages are slowing outcomes.
  • Look for unplanned work, carryover, and unlinked work as early signals of roadmap risk.
  • Use AI Iteration Summary (if enabled) to accelerate retros and align on actionable changes.
  • Partner on gitStream guardrails to reduce review friction and improve predictable throughput.

Overview

LinearB connects project planning data with real Git activity to make delivery patterns visible in a way that’s actionable for PM/Eng collaboration. For PMs, the goal isn’t to manage individual performance — it’s to understand predictability, scope stability, and the system-level constraints affecting time-to-value.

This guide helps you:

  • Improve roadmap confidence with real delivery signals.
  • Spot recurring scope disruption patterns.
  • Identify workflow bottlenecks that delay planned outcomes.
  • Align on small, repeatable process improvements with engineering.

What you likely care about

  • Are we delivering what we planned this iteration?
  • How much unplanned work is eroding capacity?
  • Where is work getting stuck before it ships?
  • Are we accumulating carryover that signals over-commitment?
  • What lightweight changes can improve predictability next sprint?

Where to spend time in LinearB

Teams → Iterations (Current)

Your best live view of sprint-level reality.

  • Track what’s planned vs. what’s actually moving.
  • Use it to spot scope creep early and align on tradeoffs mid-sprint.
Teams → Iterations (Completed)

Your primary planning-quality view.

  • Review planned vs. unplanned patterns and carryover trends.
  • Use this data to refine estimation, sizing, and intake discipline.
  • If AI Iteration Summary is available, use it to speed up a shared narrative and validate it against the underlying data.
Metrics → Delivery

Your flow health view.

  • Helps you understand whether delays are primarily coding, review, or merge-related.
  • Supports better tradeoff conversations when scope is at risk.
gitStream (if enabled)

gitStream helps teams turn best practices into consistent PR behavior with minimal noise.

  • For PMs, it’s a leverage point for improving predictable flow without adding meetings or manual enforcement.
AI Insights (if enabled)

AI can help summarize iteration and delivery patterns so you can focus on the most meaningful risks and improvements, then align with engineering on a small next-step plan.

Metrics to prioritize

  • Planned vs. unplanned patterns across iterations.
  • Carryover trends (as surfaced in your Iterations view).
  • Unlinked work patterns that may hide true effort.
  • Cycle Time stage-level trends for predictability context.
  • PR size and review friction signals where visible.

Start here in 15 minutes

PM quick-start checklist
  1. Open Teams → Iterations for your team’s current sprint.
  2. Scan for early risk signals:
    • rising unplanned work
    • likely carryover
    • unlinked work that may not be represented in the plan
  3. Open Metrics → Delivery and identify the slowest stage trend.
  4. Bring one focused question to your EM:
    • “What’s the smallest change we can test next sprint to reduce this bottleneck?”

A simple collaboration rhythm

Weekly
  • Review Iterations (Current) mid-sprint to confirm scope stability.
  • Align on tradeoffs early when unplanned work spikes.
End of sprint
  • Use Iterations (Completed) to review:
    • planned vs. delivered scope
    • carryover themes
    • unplanned work sources
  • If available, use AI Iteration Summary to accelerate a shared narrative and capture 1–2 improvements for the next sprint.

Where PMs can drive improvement safely

  • Clarify intake and priority changes to reduce late unplanned work.
  • Align on consistent issue-linking conventions so work isn’t “invisible.”
  • Partner with engineering on one small flow improvement per sprint.
  • Support gitStream adoption for low-noise PR hygiene and review clarity.

Common pitfalls

  • Using delivery metrics as individual performance signals instead of system signals.
  • Assuming every planning miss is estimation error when unplanned work is the real cause.
  • Too many improvement goals at once instead of one focused experiment per sprint.

How did we do?

Role Based Path - PMO & Delivery Operations

Role Based Path - QA & Release Management

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