Display historic change in backlog items over previous months

Question

HI.

I'm looking for a widget to display the total number of backlog items over recent months. I would have thought this would be a common need where managers want to know if a team is keeping on top of tickets going into the backlog queue and how that queue is growing or shrinking over time.

I've looked for an existing widget in the hope that I could modify one but nothing seems suitable. I've looked at some other forum posts with one answer recommending a third party app (but no explanation of how to use it) and another saying the data can't be displayed in a dashboard.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @andy_smith

You could "hack" the Atlassian interpretation of a Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD), by refining the settings to only show your backlog status values.  Please look here for information about that report:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/view-and-understand-the-cumulative-flow-diagram/

To get more value from this report, consider leaving all the status values enabled.  That will help you understand if the changes in backlog (arrival rate) are as you expect compared to Work In Progress (WIP) and completion rate (throughput).

Kind regards,
Bill

John Funk · Answer

Hi Andy,

You might try a filter such as this:

project = JIRA and status was Backlog DURING (2021-10-01, 2021-10-30)

Which would return the issues that were in the backlog status during the month of October.