Configuring Average Age Chart to accurately reflect issue from "Created" to "Resolved"

Question

When I'm looking at my Average Age chart for the defects in my project, I'm noticing that it's a line that continues going up to the point that the Average Age for a bug is almost 300 days.  I know this is not accurate, and I think it's because JIRA calculates this age based on the Resolution and not when an issue is closed.  Since a ton of our bugs since the inception of the project were closed as "Unresolved", it's making it look like the age of our issues are close to a year.

Can somebody confirm?  Is there a way to make it so it calculates average age based on Created to Closed dates, rather than how long an issue is Unresolved?  We have several hundred bugs that didn't get a resolution assigned when it was closed, and it's throwing off our average age by a lot.

If there isn't an easy way to do this, I know that I can go in and Bulk Change all of the resolutions, but I still think it will calculate the time in "Unresolved" as close to 300 days for the average.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

I am sorry, but no, not really.  The gadget is good at what it was built for, but your data is inconsistent and not going to feed it the right information, so it fails the reporting.

There's no way to "fix" the old issues without hacking the database, which I can't recommend, so the only thing I can really suggest is adding something to the filter that drops the issues, or moving them out of the report somehow.

chadsmom · Answer

That's what I was afraid of.  Do you know of a good way to gather the average age of an issue without using this gadget?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Your suggestion is correct.

The resolution is all that matters to Jira (Software is a bit different though) - if it is empty, it displays "unresolved" and treats the issue as though it is unresolved.  If it has a value, it displays that value and treats the issue as done.

There's no way to configure the chart, it works off that simple resolution rule.

You are also right about the editing.  You can bulk edit the unresolved-but-closed issues to add a resolution, but you're also right there, it will take the resolution date as being when you did that.