Average Age Report "broken" for my Team

[Ron Sethman]

Good day, the issue I am encountering is one where the problem is the report working as intended and my team not following protocol, but unfortunately I still need a working solution. 

Further Detail:

Average age report takes the creation date versus the resolution date. The resolution date only fills in if the ticket moves through the entire flowchart; however, my team did not always move things through the whole flow and sometimes (oftentimes) would skip from "in backlog" to "Done" or another status. This has caused a large number of tickets to show as unresolved despite having either a closed or done status. Meaning that our Average Age report has tickets throwing out year+ dates and messing up our metrics. 

The question I need resolved is; is there a way I can edit this report so that it shows the correct data? My team does not have the time to re-open every ticket and manually put them through the workflow to correct the resolve status. Is there any way I can edit what field it is looking for, or another report that can show the average time from Creation to complete (either closed or done). 

Thank you!

[Danut M _StonikByte_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ron Sethman,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

The fact that the Resolution field is empty on some of the issues is due to how your workflow transitions are configured. Review your workflow settings and ensure that the Resolution field is set whenever an issue moves to a Closed or Done status, regardless of the originating status.

To fix the problem for the existing issues, you can filter them by "Resolution IS empty" and then bulk set the Resolution field.

Another option is to use an app from the Atlassian Marketplace. If you’re open to trying one, our Great Gadgets app includes gadgets that can measure and display the average time from creation to completion based on status transitions, without relying on the Resolution field.

The closest equivalent to Jira’s age report is the Cycle Time Trend Chart gadget, which can be configured to calculate the time from issue creation until it moves into a done status category. It is highly configurable.

The same app offers many other useful gadgets:

• Control Chart gadget - to see issues by their time to resolution
• Histogram Chart gadget - to see the distribution of the issues by their time to resolution
• Time in Status gadget - to see time in every workflow status 
• WIP Aging Chart gadget - to see active issues by their age (time since creation)

Find more in this article: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/Building-a-powerful-Kanban-dashboard-in-Jira-with-Great-Gadgets/ba-p/1664331

Danut.
 

[Ron Sethman]

Danut, 

The workflow changes and the bulk update seems to have corrected the issue!! It will take some time for the data to catch up, but we should be working optimally now and be able to utilize the report!! 

Thank you!!!

Ron

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Ron Sethman 

Welcome to the community !!

As Bill suggested a mktplace app can help here. If you would be interested in the same for this requirement, you can try out

Time in Status Reports 

With this app you generate time in each workflow status for multiple issues with multiple filter and grouping options. 

The "Time in Status" report with Status grouping feature, and the "Time between Statuses" report can help to meet your use case of calculating the average age.

More details here.

Disclaimer : I am part of the app team for this add-on

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Ron Sethman -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

The built-in dashboard gadgets such as the Average Age Chart have very limited configuration options.  You may want to ask your Jira Product Admin if you have any marketplace apps / addons which have better reporting to meet your specific scenario, such as removing outlier data.

And...perhaps also chat with your team to better understand why some workflow steps / statuses are skipped as work is done.  There may be an underlying root cause to investigate and address.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Ron Sethman]

Bill, 

Thank you! I have already begun discussions with the team to understand root cause to prevent the issue from continuing to occur as we move forward. I will have to review if there are other options that we have. 

This report is what is being asked to be reviewed by senior executives, hence the desire to either clean this data or altar the field options. 

[Bill Sheboy]

As a temporary workaround to remove some outliers...If you can write a JQL expression to exclude the work items which are missing data, try saving that filter and using it with the Average Age Chart to observe what happens. 

For example, using the JQL CHANGED operator, one could ignore "Done" work items which never went through "In Progress" with:

project = myProject
 AND status = Done
 AND NOT status CHANGED TO "In Progress"
 ORDER BY Key ASC

[Anastasiia Maliei SaaSJet]

Hі, @Ron Sethman !

The issue you are facing is quite common. Standard Jira reports rely heavily on the Resolution Date, and if your team skips specific workflow steps, this field remains empty, causing your "Average Age" report to be inaccurate.

Since manually fixing historical data is time-consuming, the most effective solution is to use a reporting tool that calculates time based on transitions rather than the static Resolution field.

This approach allows you to:

1. Track "True" Resolution Time: You can set up a custom metric to calculate the exact duration from "Creation" to "Done/Closed," completely ignoring the missing Resolution Date.

2. Monitor SLA & Quality Metrics: Beyond simple age, you can measure First Response Time or Waiting for Customer time. This helps you distinguish between actual work time and time spent waiting for a client, ensuring your team isn't penalized for delays outside their control.

This gives you accurate averages and a better understanding of your process without needing to edit old tickets.

You can achieve this with Time Metrics Tracker | Time Between Statuses.

[Birkan Yildiz _OBSS_]

Hey @Ron Sethman

Welcome to the Community!

If you are open to use a 3rd party app, a flexible reporting app is the best way to get the correct data immediately.

Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira solves this problem. Its Duration Between Statuses report doesn't rely on the Resolution field or a specific workflow path. Instead, you simply tell it:

• Start Point: Issue Creation ( and/or Backlog)

• End Point: Done (and/or Closed)

You can add multiple start and ending points.

It calculates the total time between those two points regardless of how the ticket got there. It doesn't matter if they skipped every step in between; as long as the ticket eventually hit "Done" or "Resolved," Timepiece calculates the duration correctly.

This means you get an accurate Age report for all your historical data instantly, without needing to reopen or fix a single ticket. Also, you can get average and sum of values across tickets.

Besides, with its custom calendars, you can create a company calendar to exclude weekend, lunch break or holidays, and have more accurate data.

Full disclosure: I'm on the team that makes Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira.

You can check Timepiece on the Atlassian Marketplace. Hope this helps.