Written by Clearlane, the publisher of Clearlane Pulse.
Work rarely gets stuck loudly. A work item sits in "In progress" a little longer every day, nobody flags it, and then it comes up in a status meeting when it is already late. By then, the cost of the delay is paid. That's what WIP aging is for: checking how old each item in progress is, before it turns into a surprise.
Old is not the same as stuck
Ten days in progress is normal for a team whose work usually takes two weeks. For a team that usually finishes in two days, it is a warning sign. A fixed rule such as "flag anything older than a week" will either shout all the time or stay silent when it matters. The only fair yardstick is your own team's usual pace.
Measure your usual pace
You can do this with any tool that can read Jira's status history:
- Take the work items your team finished over the last twelve weeks.
- For each one, measure the time from its first move into an in-progress status until it was done. That is its cycle time.
- Find two values: the median (half of the work finishes faster) and the 85th percentile (85% finishes faster).
Then compare every item that is running right now:
- Faster than the median so far: it is flowing, leave it alone.
- Past the median but under the 85th percentile: it is slowing. Mention it at the next stand-up.
- Past the 85th percentile: it is stuck. Talk about it today.
What native Jira gives you
A JQL filter can list everything in progress and sort it by date. What it cannot do is compare each item with how long your work usually takes. That comparison is what turns a long list into a short one. Time in status reports and Jira's control chart are great for looking back. They just won't tell you which item to chase today.
What to do with stuck work
Ask what is blocking the item, not who is slow. Split it if it turned out larger than planned. And consider not starting new work until the stuck item moves again. And if several stuck items pile up in the same status? That's your bottleneck, right there.
How Clearlane Pulse does it
- It shows every work item in progress, how long it has been running, and whether that is normal for your team, using what you finished over the last 84 days.
- Each item is marked flowing, slowing or stuck against your finished work, measured from the first in-progress status until done.
- It says it in plain words for each item, such as "3× longer than usual". Pulse points at what has run longer than usual; the team decides what to do.
- Scope: the whole project, a single version or a single epic. It counts stories, tasks, bugs and other standard work items, and leaves out epics and subtasks.
- It works in Jira Service Management projects too, to spot requests open longer than usual.
- It needs five finished work items in twelve weeks. Until then, it still lists what is running and for how long. It reads Jira with the viewer's permissions, and your data stays in your Atlassian site.
Open the project with the longest stand-up and check whether the stuck items are the ones you expected.
Part of Clearlane for Projects. Clearlane Pulse on the Atlassian Marketplace:
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/356302223
