Need help understanding cumulative flow diagram

Question

Hi, I'm trying to determine ways of improving our processes in the development cycles (sprints) and what are the issues we have. Reports are enabled on our next-gen project and I'm using Cumulative Flow Diagram, trying to find some peaks or something that could point me in the right direction. The issue is I am not sure how to read this diagram and it doesn't seem to show any kind of "movement". I tried filtering past 2 weeks, past month, past 3 months and it looks pretty much the same + the number of issues axis doesn't make sense cause we never have that many tickets in the sprints..
I have attached 2 screenshots of our reports and would appreciate any kind of advice.

The things I did notice so far is that the reports contains:

- Issues from the backlog, so not just from the board or the ones we worked in specific period..
- Issues that were completed long time ago, so not just from the period I chose for the report
- all statuses except ToDo and Done seem like nothing is happening or there is no progress whatsoever towards the end date

Am I doing something wrong and is there some other way for me to see/inspect our ways of working during the sprints?

I would like to see how often we fail on QA stage for example, so this would give me some insight..or how often a ticket is returned from code review to know if we have issues there perhaps..anything useful really..

Also, i am open to any other advise in the area of sprint-inspection and process improvements..but first I need to inspect in order to know what to improve :)

Thank you, 
Milica

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi, Milica.  If this ends up helping you, please consider marking this question as answered.  That will help others in the community find solutions faster.  Thanks!

Milica Djuricic · Answer

Thank you very much Bill, I will try with this approach you suggested and hopefully I'll get some insight :)

Best,

Milica

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Milica Djuricic

You are using this "Cumulative Flow Diagram" (CFD) report correctly.  The design in JIRA just limits what you can see.  This is the Next-Gen version of this report.  The Classic project version of this report has the Refine Report option, but Next-Gen does not.

What a CFD can show is:

* Arrival rate of work (slope of the top of the backlog items)
* Completion rate of work (slope of the done items)
* Work in progress (WIP) counts (height of the items, between backlog and done)
* Lead time (horizontal time distance from start of in progress to done)
* And many other indications of flow issues (spikes, flat spots, and drops in overall height)

One challenge with this CFD implementation is there is no way to start the y-axis at a specific value *and* preserve the scaling.  What you can do to improve visibility of the backward flow you note for QA stage is:

* Hide the backlog items (uncheck todo)
* Limit the time-frame to 2-3 sprint lengths, or less
* Selectively hide other status values which appear stable

If that does not help enough, your other options are to buy better chart add-ons from the marketplace or to build your own reports, using logs, automation rules, or data export.

Best regards,

Bill