How to Get Precise Jira Cycle Time: Excluding Weekends and Holidays
Time sometimes stops for teams, and that is a good thing. However, Jira uses a 24/7 calendar for most of the reports. And that creates a huge gap when it comes to seeing exact numbers of the performance and actionable insights.
That’s where Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira steps in. By leveraging our powerful Custom Calendars feature, Timepiece filters out the noise of non-working days, nights, and holidays, transforming your Jira history logs into precise, reality-based metrics.
Whether you're tracking Cycle Time, analyzing Lead Time, or hunting down hidden bottlenecks, Timepiece gives you the clarity you need to optimize your workflow with confidence.
The Problem: The "24/7" Clock
As we all know, Jira’s native clock is relentless. It counts every second, whether your team is coding, sleeping, or enjoying a weekend BBQ. This 24/7 tracking creates a distorted reality where downtime looks like a delay.
Consider how this skews your data:
The Weekend Paradox: If you work on a ticket for two hours on Friday afternoon and finish it in two hours on Monday morning, your actual effort is only 4 hours. However, because Jira’s 24/7 calendar counts every hour of the weekend while the office was closed, it reports a misleading 67-hour resolution time.
The Overnight Gap: Even on weekdays, the clock keeps ticking. A quick task spanning Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning appears as a 17-hour drag, not a quick win.
The Consequence: Your efficiency is buried under hours of 'calendar noise,' rendering metrics like Cycle Time unreliable.
The Fix: Timepiece aligns reporting with your actual business rhythm. By defining Custom Calendars, the app automatically pauses the timer during nights, weekends, and holidays. This ensures your data reflects true team performance, not just elapsed time.
Here is how to configure Timepiece for 100% accuracy:
Step 1: Accessing Calendar Settings
To define a custom calendar, you must have Jira Admin permissions. Navigate to the configuration page via Apps Menu (Cloud): Settings > Apps > Timepiece > Calendar Settings.
You can define multiple calendars for different teams or regions. For instance, your Support team might be 24/7, while your Dev team works 9-5. Both calendars can be defined and selected separately in the reporting screen.
Step 2: Defining the Work Week and Shifts
In the Work Week section, you can indicate which days are included and the definite start/end times for those days.
Lunch Breaks: To exclude lunch breaks, split the workday into two shifts (e.g., 08:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00)
Flexible Schedules: You can set different hours for any day, such as a full day on weekdays and a half-day on Saturdays.
Step 3: Handling Holidays
With Timepiece, you can also exclude public and company holidays. Timepiece allows you to mark specific dates as non-working days.
Recurring Holidays: For Recurring holidays like New Year's Day, click the Apply each year option so you don't have to re-enter it again.
Step 4: Time Zones
Global teams often operate in different time zones, which can skew data. In the calendar settings, you can select a specific Time Zone. The working hours and issue history dates will be evaluated based on this selection.
Step 5: Setting a Default Calendar
Admins can set a Default Calendar that applies to the entire Jira instance. This ensures that when new users open Timepiece for the first time, they immediately see data relevant to the company's standard working hours.
Step 6: Fine-Tuning Reports: "Day Length" Settings
Once your calendar is configured, you need to decide how to display the data. Timepiece provides a critical setting called Day Length, which changes how durations are calculated and displayed.
24 Hour Days: This calculates 1 day as 24 hours. It is generally used for continuous reporting.
Business Days: This adapts the length of "1 day" to match your calendar's working hours (e.g., 8 hours).
Using the "Business Days" setting is essential if you want your report output to reflect the "business day count" rather than raw chronological time.
Stop Measuring the Calendar. Start Measuring Performance
By activating Custom Calendars in Timepiece, you move beyond raw data and start seeing the truth about your workflow:
Spot Real Bottlenecks: Distinguish between a ticket that is truly stuck in 'Code Review' and one that is just waiting for Monday morning.
Identify Team Overload: Use Assignee Duration reports to see who is carrying the heaviest load during actual working hours, without weekends skewing the numbers.
Visualize Trends: Group your data by week or month to instantly answer the big question: Are we getting faster or slower?
Nail Your KPIs: Get precise, reality-based metrics for Cycle Time, Lead Time, and Issue Age.
If your reports include non-working hours, you aren't measuring your team's performance, but the calendar. Timepiece fixes this. With features like multiple shifts and bulk holiday imports, you can customize your reporting to match your reality, ensuring every metric you share is one you can trust. To learn more, visit Timepiece's Atlassian Marketplace page.
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Birkan Yildiz _OBSS_
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