Is Your Jira Workflow Optimal? Measure It with the Time in Status Gadget

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Do you know where your Jira workflow is slowing down?

Understanding how long issues stay in each status is important, because it helps you see which part of the workflow takes the most time and identify those areas that need optimization.

Measuring how long issues spend in each stage of a Jira workflow can be challenging. Jira offers some native tools for this, but teams often need a clearer and more intuitive way to turn that data into actionable insights.

In this article you will find an easy way to track the total or the average time in status and group data by different criteria - using the Time In Status gadget offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira and Confluence. 

Why Native Time-in-Status Tracking In Jira Isn’t Enough

Jira includes an Average Time in Status gadget that can show basic average time spent in each status over time, but it lacks flexible grouping, aggregation options, and advanced visualizations.

Atlassian Analytics can provide insights through its dashboard templates, but it is a premium feature and can be complex to understand and use.In addition, there is no native way in Jira to visualize time in status at the individual issue level.

In most cases, teams need easier & more efficient ways to uncover detailed insights, such as flexible grouping and richer visualizations, to quickly identify slow parts of the workflow, compare performance across projects, and build dashboards that truly reflect workflow efficiency.

That’s where the Time In Status gadget from Great Gadgets comes in.

The Time in Status gadget from Great Gadgets - a simple and powerful solution

The Time In Status gadget offered by Great Gadgets app gives teams a complete, highly configurable and real-time view of how long work spends in every part of the workflow — directly on Jira dashboards. 

Because we know every team operates differently, we build each gadget to be highly configurable. The Time In Status gadget lets you:

✅ Track not only time-in-status, but also time-in-status-category or or time-in-board-column.

✅ Measure average time or total time in days, hours or minutes.

✅ Include sub-tasks in calculations.

✅ Include or exclude specific statuses or status categories.

✅ Group data by assignee, project, priority, or any custom field.

✅ Visualize results as pie charts, bar charts, column or stacked column charts.

✅ Display a Data tab with a detailed breakdown per issue, easily exportable to CSV.

The set-up is quick and straightforward. Add the gadget to your dashboard and start configure it to match your needs. The configuration options are flexible and intuitive, making it easy to control how your data is displayed.

Here’s an example with the gadget configured to show the average time in status as a pie chart, using a Jira filter as the data source:

How does it help? Let's see some real-life use cases

Use Case #1: Identifying what slowed-us down in the past 30 days

Configure the gadget to calculate average time in status for a filter/JQL that returns the issues resolved in the past 30 days and to display the result as a pie chart. You will get something like this:

This chart shows that issues in the Blocked status lasted an average of 2.8 hours. It might be time to investigate what caused these blockers and find ways to eliminate them.

Additionally, the In Testing status took slightly longer on average (4.3 hours per issue) compared to the In Progress status. This could be an opportunity to work with the team on adding automated tests to reduce the time-consuming manual testing process.

Use Case #2: Identifying who caused delays in the past 30 days

Configure the gadget to calculate the average time in status for a filter or JQL that returns issues resolved in the past 30 days. Group the data by Assignee and display the results as a stacked bar chart. You will get something like this:

Looking at the chart, you can see that issues assigned to John took longer than those assigned to other team members. In particular, the In Progress status took significantly more time compared to the rest of the team. It may be worthwhile to discuss with John to understand what caused the delays.

💡Tip: The gadget also offers a Data tab that displays a detailed report with all the issues and their time in every status of the workflow, which can be exported to CSV format.

Why It Matters

Tracking time in status helps you improve performance, optimize the workflow, reduce delays and make data-driven decisions. With a highly configurable Time In Status gadget teams and managers can:

• Identify slow workflow steps and optimize the part where work is getting stuck.

• Understand team performance and learn who’s delivering fast and who may need support.

• Create dashboards for every role, so that managers, team members and stakeholders see the data they need.

👉 If you’d like to test it out, Great Gadgets is free for 30 days on the Atlassian Marketplace.