⚡Transform your Epic progress report from basic to breakthrough 🚀

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Agile teams, RTEs, and program managers face a common challenge: tracking delivery progress across multiple epics, teams, and boards without clear visibility into capacity distribution or workstream throughput. Jira's native reporting falls short when you need epic-level insights that span projects and reveal which initiatives drive overall delivery.

This is where the Epic progress report transforms your tracking, providing comprehensive visibility into multi-team epic delivery in a single, customizable dashboard. Available through the Agile Velocity Charts app, this solution bridges the gap between basic reporting and strategic program insights.

👉 Explore this interactive Epic progress report 📊 example to see the full capabilities in action.

Let's start by examining why Jira's built-in options leave teams wanting more.

The limitations of Jira's native chart

Jira provides a native Epic Report that offers basic progress tracking for individual epics, but it's designed for simple use cases and lacks the flexibility modern Agile teams need. Here's what holds it back:

❌ Single epic, single team constraint – The Epic Report only works with one epic and one board at a time, making cross-epic or multi-team analysis impossible without manual consolidation.

❌ Fixed estimation and status configuration – You're locked into default Story Points and Done statuses with no ability to customize estimation fields or define what "complete" means for different teams.

❌ No capacity allocation visibility – The report shows completed work, but can't visualize target capacity percentages or compare actual delivery against planned epic investment.

❌ Missing multi-metric analysis – You only see completed work without additional indicators like commitment changes, rollover, or scope evolution that explain delivery patterns.

❌ Limited historical flexibility – The report uses a fixed timeframe with no option to analyze trends across sprints, compare periods, or track long-term epic performance.

While adequate for a quick check on a single team's epic progress, Jira's Epic Report cannot support the strategic analysis that Release Train Engineers, Program Managers, and Scrum Masters need to coordinate multi-team delivery and balance workstream capacity.

Fortunately, there's a solution purpose-built for these challenges.

Powerful alternative: Epic progress report by Broken Build

The Epic progress report by Broken Build expands far beyond Jira's native limitations with a flexible, multi-dimensional approach to epic tracking. Built for simplicity yet powerful in scope, this solution addresses the core jobs-to-be-done that traditional Epic Reports can't handle:

• tracking multiple epics across teams,

• visualizing capacity allocation with target lines,

• comparing epic contributions to total throughput,

• analyzing delivery with customizable metrics and estimation fields.

The report works with any combination of Scrum boards, Kanban boards, or projects, making it ideal for organizations with diverse team structures. Configurable at every level – from estimation fields to Done status definitions to metric selection – it adapts to how your teams actually work rather than forcing them into rigid reporting constraints.

Ready to see what's possible? The Agile Velocity Charts app brings these capabilities to your Jira dashboard, transforming epic tracking from a basic progress check into strategic delivery intelligence. Let's explore the key features that make this transformation possible.

Epic progress report: Key features & JTBD

The Epic progress report includes powerful capabilities designed specifically for multi-team epic analysis and capacity planning. Here are the three most impactful features that address the gaps in Jira's native reporting:

📊 Interactive breakdown by epic contribution

The report displays completed work grouped by epic across your selected data sources, with full interactive drill-down capabilities. Click any sprint or interval to open the breakdown view and see exactly how much work each epic contributed to the total delivery.

Select an individual epic to highlight its contribution across all periods, giving instant visibility into which workstreams are driving team throughput.

The breakdown extends beyond summary numbers – you can scroll to the detailed issue list to view the actual completed items that comprise each epic's progress. This transparency connects high-level epic metrics to ground-level execution, making program reviews and stakeholder updates both comprehensive and credible.

🎯 Why this helps:

• Track epic velocity trends – Monitor whether specific epics are accelerating, decelerating, or consuming unexpected capacity over time.

• Compare epic contributions side-by-side – See immediately which initiatives are moving fastest and which might need attention or resource rebalancing.

• Validate capacity allocation decisions – Confirm that actual delivery distribution aligns with strategic priorities set during PI planning or roadmap sessions.

• Facilitate data-driven discussions – Replace subjective impressions about "which epic is taking too much time" with concrete percentages and story point contributions that everyone can see.

⚖️ Filtered epic analysis with side-by-side comparison

Use the Issue filter to narrow the chart's scope and display progress for a specific epic in isolation. This focused view lets you analyze one workstream's velocity pattern without the noise of other epics, providing clear visibility into that initiative's delivery cadence across sprints or intervals.

The real power comes when you save filtered versions as separate gadgets on the same dashboard. Place the overall Epic progress chart alongside individual epic progress reports to create side-by-side comparisons that reveal how a single epic's trajectory compares to total team throughput – instantly showing whether that epic is consuming more or less capacity than expected.

🎯 Why this helps:

• Isolate problematic epics – When one epic consistently underdelivers or shows erratic velocity, filter to investigate its specific pattern without distraction from other work.

• Build executive dashboards – Create focused views for different stakeholders, showing only the epics relevant to their area of responsibility or strategic interest.

• Benchmark epic performance – Compare an epic's delivery rate against overall team capacity to spot resource allocation imbalances or identify high-performing workstreams worth replicating.

• Support portfolio decisions – Provide clear data for investment discussions by showing exactly how capacity splits between competing epics and whether that split is healthy.

📈 Target lines for capacity planning

Add reference lines to the chart that represent planned capacity allocation for specific epics, configurable either as absolute values (story points across all data sources) or as percentages relative to sprint commitment (for Scrum boards). These target lines overlay on the actual epic progress bars, creating instant visual comparison between planned and actual epic investment.

In practice, this means you can define that "Epic Kappa should consume 10% of team capacity" and immediately see whether reality matches the plan – the target line makes deviations obvious at a glance. For program-level planning, this transforms abstract capacity discussions into concrete, measurable outcomes that teams can track and adjust throughout the PI.

🎯 Why this helps:

• Validate PI planning accuracy – Check whether capacity commitments made during planning sessions are actually materializing, or if workload is drifting toward different epics.

• Identify investment imbalances – Spot situations where critical strategic work is getting crowded out by other initiatives consuming more capacity than intended.

• Enable proactive adjustments – Catch capacity misalignment early enough to rebalance team focus or adjust scope before quarterly goals become unachievable.

• Communicate expectations clearly – Give teams concrete, visual targets that make capacity goals unambiguous and create a shared understanding of relative epic priorities.

⚙️ Additional powerful features

Beyond these core capabilities, the Epic progress report includes several configuration options that make it adaptable to any team's workflow:

• Extended metrics for comprehensive analysis – Go beyond completed work by adding metrics like Initial commitment, Final commitment, Rollover, Added work, Removed work, or Estimation change to understand how the scope evolved throughout sprints and what drove epic delivery patterns.

• Flexible calculation configuration – Define custom Done statuses or from-to column transitions for each team, and choose any estimation field (Story Points, Issue Count, Effort, or custom fields) to ensure the report accurately reflects how your teams measure progress.

• Consistent visual presentation – Control the Y-axis height with Auto (dynamically adjusts to data) or Fixed height settings with custom minimum and maximum values, making dashboards and presentations more consistent and easier to compare across multiple gadgets.

These configuration options ensure the Epic progress chart adapts to your specific workflow requirements rather than forcing teams into rigid reporting constraints.

These features work together to transform the Jira epic report from a simple progress tracker into a strategic tool for program management, capacity optimization, and cross-team coordination. The combination of multi-epic visibility, flexible filtering, and target-based planning provides the complete picture that RTEs, program managers, and Agile leaders need to make informed decisions about workstream balance and delivery forecasting.

How the Epic progress report works in action (Interactive example)

The best way to understand this report's power is to experience it firsthand. We've created a fully interactive demo that lets you explore the Epic progress report with real project data and adjustable configurations. You can experiment with different settings, test various filters, and see how the chart responds to configuration changes – all without installing anything.

It's a complete, working version of the Epic progress chart in Jira that shows exactly what you'll see on your own dashboard once configured with your team's data. Available through the Agile Velocity Charts app, the gadget you test in the example is the same one you'll use for daily tracking.

👉 Try it yourself: Jira epic progress report 📊 interactive example

Setting up the Epic progress report on your Jira dashboard

The Epic progress report is part of the Agile Velocity Charts app, available as a separate gadget or inside the Agile Reports & Gadgets bundle. Getting it running on your dashboard is straightforward – the entire setup process takes just a few minutes, and the gadget begins populating with your team data immediately.

The configuration is intuitive and flexible, letting you customize everything from data sources to estimation fields to target lines without technical complexity. Here's how to get started:

1️⃣ Go to your Jira dashboard – Navigate to any existing dashboard where you want to add epic progress tracking, or create a new dashboard specifically for program-level reporting.

2️⃣ Click "Add gadget" – Use the dashboard menu to open the gadget directory, where you can search through available reporting options.

3️⃣ Search for "Agile Velocity Charts" – Find the app in the gadget directory. This is the standalone app that provides the Epic progress report functionality.

4️⃣ Click "Add" and configure – Select the gadget and you'll be prompted to configure your data sources (boards, projects, or JQL filters), choose your estimation field (Story Points, Issue Count, or custom fields), define what counts as Done for your teams, and optionally add target lines for capacity planning. The settings are organized logically and update the preview in real time as you adjust them.

That's it! Your Epic progress chart in Jira is now live and will update automatically as work progresses.

Why epic progress visibility matters

Tracking Epic progress in the Jira dashboard transforms how Agile teams, RTEs, and Program Managers understand and optimize workstream delivery.

Here's what you gain with a breakthrough Epic progress report:

✅ Multi-team epic visibility – Track one or multiple epics across several teams, boards, or projects in a single view, eliminating the need to check each team's progress separately.

✅ Capacity allocation insights – See exactly how much each epic contributes to total delivery effort, with target lines that make planned vs. actual capacity distribution immediately obvious.

✅ Customizable estimation and metrics – Use your team's actual estimation fields and Done status definitions, with options to add commitment metrics, rollover tracking, or scope change indicators that explain delivery patterns.

✅ Strategic program intelligence – Move beyond basic completion percentages to understand workstream velocity trends, identify underperforming epics, and make data-driven decisions about resource rebalancing.

✅ Flexible analysis options – Apply issue filters to focus on specific epics, break down results by team or project, and adjust timeframes to analyze short-term progress or long-term delivery trends.

The Epic progress graph in Jira becomes more than a reporting tool – it's a lens into program health that helps teams coordinate better, helps RTEs make smarter planning decisions, and helps stakeholders understand delivery reality rather than optimistic projections.

👉 Experience the difference: Epic progress report example 📊

Ready to upgrade from Jira's basic Epic Report to comprehensive multi-team epic tracking? The Epic progress report is available through the Agile Velocity Charts app or as part of the complete Agile Reports & Gadgets bundle. All Broken Build apps offer a 30-day free trial with no credit card required and are completely free for teams of up to 10 users, making it accessible for small teams and risk-free for larger organizations to evaluate.

Start tracking epic progress with clarity and confidence today. Transform your Epic report in Jira from basic status checks to strategic delivery intelligence that drives better decisions across your Agile Release Train.

🚀 Your breakthrough in Jira epic progress visibility is just one dashboard gadget away!