Which Jira Issues Took the Longest Time to Resolve

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(And Why You Should Care)

Agile teams thrive on momentum, but even the best teams experience slowdowns. If you're managing projects in Jira, you're likely asking:

“Where does all our time go?”

You're not alone. Whether you're shipping software, supporting customers, or handling operations, some issues persist, and unless you’re tracking them, you won’t know why.

It’s Not Always the Big Issues That Take the Longest

You might expect high-complexity tickets to be the slowest. But in reality, it’s often the in-between stages — not the task itself — that quietly steal your time.

Think of that one ticket that sat in “In Review” for 10 days... or the support case that got stuck “Waiting for Customer” until someone finally followed up.

These aren’t rare. They’re patterns. And they’re measurable.

What the Data Says About Delay

According to the 17th Annual State of Agile Report:

• 47% of teams struggle with organizational resistance to change, a common cause of blocked or delayed issues.
• 36% still measure only by velocity, which ignores tickets stuck in non-working statuses.
• 29% now focus on value delivered — but that value is delayed when bottlenecks go undetected.

You can’t accelerate flow until you understand where it breaks.

Where Time Gets Lost in Jira (and What to Do About It)

Here are some of the most common slow zones, based on aggregated usage patterns from teams using Time in Status:

🧪 1. "In Review"

Use Case: Identify bottlenecks in the review stage.
✅ How: Use Time in Status to create a report showing average time spent in “In Review” per assignee.
💡 Insight: One client team found 26% of their sprint time was spent waiting on reviews from a single overloaded engineer. Fix? Set reviewer SLAs and spread review tasks evenly.

💬 2. "Waiting for Customer"

Use Case: Catch tickets stalling due to missing client input.
✅ How: Filter issues that spend more than 3 days in “Waiting for Customer”.
💡 Insight: Automatically flag and follow up on stalled support tickets to protect SLA compliance.

⏳ 3. Bugs in the To Do status

Use Case: Compare time spent in Backlog by issue type
✅ How: Generate a Time in Status report grouped by issue type.
💡 Insight: In one case, high-priority bugs sat 9x longer than feature requests. Why? They weren’t visible on the team board. Fixing visibility led to 4x faster resolution.

🔁 4. Workflow Churn

Use Case: Identify issues that bounce back and forth between statuses.
✅ How: Use the Status Count report to see how often tickets are reopened or re-enter certain statuses
💡 Insight: Frequent back-and-forth between “Ready for QA” and “To Do” often means incomplete requirements or inconsistent QA coverage.

📉 5. Low Performer Identification (Without Finger-Pointing)

Use Case: Spot process-level inefficiencies by team, not individuals
✅ How: Aggregate time in status by team or label (e.g., squads, regions, or product lines)
💡 Insight: Instead of blaming individuals, teams used this to redesign handoffs and improve async workflows.

This Isn’t About Blame — It’s About Bottlenecks

Delays don’t mean people aren’t working hard. They often mean your process is hiding friction.

And with visibility, you can take action.

Even minor tweaks — like SLAs for reviews or automation for stale issues — can significantly improve delivery speed and team morale.

Why It Matters

Here's why reducing issue resolution time should be on your roadmap:

• ⏱️ Accelerate delivery.
• 🧹 Declutter your backlog.
• 🔍 Improve forecasting and reporting.
• 😊 Boost customer satisfaction and internal confidence.
• 💡 Make better prioritization decisions.

What You Can Do Today with Time in Status

🛠️ Try this quick exercise:

1. Run a report showing average time in each status for your last sprint.
2. Spot outliers — tickets that spent 2x more time in one stage.
3. Ask why — was it unclear ownership? Review delay? Lack of automation?
4. Fix one thing — SLA for reviews, auto-reminders, status transitions.
5. Rerun the report next sprint and compare the results.

Small insights, big wins.

Final Thought

Your Jira workflow is already telling a story — you just need the right lens to see it. With Time in Status, you can turn delay into data — and data into decisions. Don’t just track work. Understand where it slows down — and unlock your team’s potential.