Understanding Resolution Time and Average Age Reports

Arjen Uittenbogaard

After some months of working with a Kanban board in Jira (6.4.7), the tool came up with the reports.

I think, I understand the concepts of Resolution Time (average number of days issues took to be resolved) and of Average Age ("average number of days that issues were unresolved for a given day over the past 90 days"). Yet, looking at the graphs, a number of questions pop up:

1) In the first graph: why is there not a bar on every day? Are bars maybe only shown on days that an issue was resolved? And is the lenght of the bar then the number of days it took *that* specific issue to be closed? But what average is then shown?

2) Do I understand correctly that the bars in the second graph shows a running average? If so, what happenend on, e.g., Feb 26, where the length of the bars decreases from 61 to 58? What does it require to decrease the average with 3 days? Have a lot of issues been resolved on that day in no time?

3) Is there a connection between the bars in the first graph and the growth/decline in the second? If so: what is that connection?

I love to use metrics to help the team draw conclusions on their performance, but with these questions, it is hard to know what conclusions can be drawn.

 

Emre Toptancı [OBSS]

Hello @Arjen Uittenbogaard ,

The Resolution Time Chart shows the average resolution time of issues in your filter that were resolved on any given day. In other words, each bar represents the average resolution time of only the issues resolved on that day. If no issues were resolved on a given day, then no bar.

The Average Age Report shows the average age of all non-resolved issues in the filter. Even when there is no action on issues, the bars will keep getting longer each day because the existing issues are aging. When you resolve one or more issues, the next day average may move up or down based on the age of those resolved issues. 

 

These two reports are very high-level reports that provide summary data and do not allow you to drill down.

Our team at OBSS built Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira app for greater flexibility and details. It is available for Jira Server, Cloud and Data Center.

Time in Status allows you to see how much time each issue spent on each status or assigned to each assignee. You can also combine statuses into consolidated columns to see metrics like Ticket Age, Cycle Time or Lead Time. 

You can calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by issue fields you select. (For example see the total Resolution time per Epic, or average Ticket Age per issuetype, etc.). 

Below are screenshots that show a custom Lead Time field that shows the total of ToDo and InProgress statuses. The same can be done for any status combination.

      

The app calculates its reports using already existing Jira issue histories so when you install the app, you don't need to add anything to your issue workflows and you can get reports on your past issues as well.

The app has Custom calendar support that your are looking for. This feature enables you to get your reports based on a 24/7 calendar or your custom business calendar. (This one is important because a 24/7 calendar in most cases shows misleading data. For example an issue created at 16:00 on Friday and was resolved at 09:00 on next Monday seems to stay open for 2,5 days but in terms of business hours, it is only a few hours. You can see this using Time in Status by OBSS.)

Finally, the app has History Trim feature. This feature allows you to report on a subsection of issue histories instead of the whole history. Very useful when you want to focus on changes made during sprint or project phase.

Using Time in Status you can:

• See how much time each issue spent on each status, assignee, user group and also see dates of status transitions.
• Calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by issue fields you select. (For example see average InProgress time per project and per issuetype.)
• Export your data as XLS, XLSX or CSV.
• Access data via REST API. (for integrations)
• Visualize data with various chart types.
• See Time in Status reports on Jira Dashboard gadgets (released for cloud, server&DC gadget coming soon)

Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira

EmreT