How does the "Control Chart" report calculates the time spent in a column?

aleksey.shishkin

We are using Jira Cloud for our Kanban project. Control Chart report shows the length of time a work item spent in each column in our Kanban board and a total time ("cycletime").

Could you please explain how does "Control Chart" calculates them? Where is this information stored? Can I somehow add the time the item has been in progress (from the moment someone started to work on it to the current moment) to the card (It is possible to add three additional fields to the card, e.g. Original Estimate).

(We don't log work in issues, so I can't use "The time spent". But I need to know for how long the item is being worked on).

Emre Toptancı [OBSS]

Hello Aleksey,

Control chart calculates the data using the issue history, the same history you can see at the bottom of each issue's view screen.

Since it is not stored as a field value on Jira, it is not possible to show it on the card.

If you are interested in a ready-to-go solution, our team at OBSS created Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira app for this exact need. It is available for Jira Cloud, Server and Data Center.

Time in Status can show the data you seek as a tab under each issue. It also has its own reporting screen to get this information in bulk.

Using Time in Status you can report how much time each issue spent on each status, each assignee or even each user group. (useful for identifying bottlenecks in your process). You can consolidate multiple statuses into a report column (useful for calculating metrics like lead/cycle times). You can also see the number of times each status or transition was used (very useful for inspecting things like reopen counts). You can also list the status entry/exit dates.

Calendar support is also really important because reporting on a 24/7 calendar, without considering business days/hours gives misleading results. Using Time in Status by OBSS, you can produce reports based on the default 24/7 calendar or define your own business calendars with custom workdays and working hours. 

Also add system or custom fields as columns to your report and customize the view format of durations.

All data can be exported as XLS, XLSX, CSV.

Emre Toptancı