How to build a proper Jira Cumulative Flow Diagram for actionable workflow insights?

[John Phillips]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to use the Jira Cumulative Flow Diagram to better understand how work moves through our process - specifically tracking arrivals, departures, and WIP over time.

The built-in Cumulative Flow Diagram gives a basic view, but I’m finding it hard to customize. I’d like clearer status groupings and more meaningful trend visibility so we can actually use it for decision-making, not just as a static report.

Is there a way to configure the Cumulative Flow Diagram in Jira to make it more actionable? Or is the native version limited when it comes to deeper workflow analysis?

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @John Phillips 

Welcome to the community.

Be aware that the diagram bases its information on the filter used on the board in the project, as it is board specific

And it's the board's column mapping. A work item is considered to be 'To Do' when it is in a status that has been mapped to the left-most column of your board. Identical for 'Done', a work item must be in a status that has been mapped to the right-most column of your board.

It tracks how many work items are passing through each column of your board, helping to see which columns accumulate more work items than others.

Native reports can't be customised.

You could try 3rd party apps, https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=cfd&hosting=cloud

[Daniel Wester _55 Degrees_]

You mentioned wanting a more actionable Cumulative Flow Diagram — and since we’re the folks behind ActionableAgile Analytics (we're a marketplace partner), I felt I probably shouldn’t stay quiet. 🙂

The short answer is that Jira’s native CFD has structural limitations. It’s driven entirely by board columns, and if you filter out a column (especially “Done”), it stops behaving like a true cumulative chart. That makes it harder to clearly interpret arrivals, departures, and WIP trends in a mathematically consistent way. It’s fine for a quick visual, but once you want deeper workflow analysis, you start running into those constraints pretty quickly.

If your goal is decision-making rather than just visualization, you typically need something that preserves true cumulative logic, allows custom workflow stage groupings independent of board columns, and makes arrival/departure trends explicit. That’s exactly the problem space we built ActionableAgile to solve. No pressure at all — but it may be worth a look if you’re trying to move beyond what the native report can offer.

[Vasyl Krokha _Broken Build_]

Hey John!

The challenge: You want a proper Cumulative Flow Diagram to visualize how work flows through your process - tracking arrivals, departures, and WIP - but building one manually in Atlassian Analytics requires significant effort to replicate the stacked-area logic, status groupings, and trend lines that make a CFD truly actionable.

A dedicated solution exists: The Agile Cumulative Flow Charts app is specifically built for this. It renders a full Cumulative Flow Diagram directly in Jira, with status-level bands, Arrival/Departure trend lines, Burnup and Burndown Flow views, and drill-down into individual issues - no custom SQL or charting workarounds needed. You can scope it to boards, sprints, releases, epics, initiatives, JQL, etc.

Documentation: Cumulative Flow Charts

There are also interactive, clickable examples showing exactly how the chart works in different contexts:

• Kanban Cumulative Flow Diagram
• Scrum Cumulative Flow Diagram

Feel free to ask if you have any follow-up questions - happy to help!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Vasyl Krokha _Broken Build_ 

As a reminder...when recommending a marketplace vendor product, please ensure you disclose your affiliation to that vendor in your post wording, and not just in your profile name / badge. For more information, please see:

Atlassian Partners - Rules of Engagement

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/App-Central-articles/Atlassian-Partners-Rules-of-Engagement/ba-p/2899328

Kind regards,
Bill

[kh-federico]

Hi Vasyl Krokha _Broken Build_, when you're part of an Atlassian Partner team, we kindly ask that you also include text in your comment stating you work for the company that built the app, per our Partner Rules of Engagement. Thanks!