3 tools to analyze Cycle and Lead Time in the Jira

[#1]

When a team has hundreds or thousands of simultaneous issues and queries waiting and working, it is difficult to track the rationality of time allocation and team performance. It is easy to break the deadline or keep the process frozen for an unacceptable amount of time. This usually impairs the project flexibility, threatens the entire process, and causes losses to the company. Therefore, it is important to set up an effective process monitoring system. This is well handled by Jira.

Cycle time is the time from the beginning to the end of a certain action. It is the time during which the issue is marked as "In progress". The statuses used to calculate cycle time depend on the workflow you're using for your project.

Lead time covers a longer period of time: from receiving a request for an action (not when work begins) to the moment this action is completed, including the time in the queue.

1. Jira Control Chart 

The Control Chart is a built-in Jira solution that allows you to assemble and evaluate the overall Cycle Time and Lead Time of Jira's classic project (for example, a sprint, a specific version of your product or service, or any other unit you specify) as quickly as possible.

You can find this tool in the Reports tab. On this chart, the X-axis shows calendar dates and the Y-axis shows elapsed time (in days). With Jira Chart you can:

• select a specific point (issue or cluster of issues) and see average data on it; 
• select and analyze the period of interest in a chosen project;
• change the analysis period. 

Also, you can edit the report quickly using instant filters, column settings, and display adjustments (for example, it is useful to eliminate non-working days.  So they do not distort the analysis).

If your project has minimal deviations from the average Cycle (Lead) Time, you can make optimistic predictions: your project pipeline will run smoothly. Strong leaps on a diagram of the Control Chart indicate workflow problems in your team. It can be: 

• long waiting periods,
• delays, 
• downtimes on pause, 
• inappropriate Cycle time compared to average values etc. 

All outliers at the top of the schedule could be the reason for a conversation about personal productivity with the team members.

In general, the Control Chart is a useful tool for quickly understanding the overall situation in a project. In Jira Control Chart, you can monitor average time data and a graphic view is available for analysis. 

To enhance Jira Cloud in quick orientation in Cycle (Lead) time bottlenecks, our SaaSJet team has developed such applications as Time in Status and Time Between Statuses (works for Jira`s classic and next-gen projects).

Those tools created to give more freedom in making informative reports. They help to dig deeper into the monitoring of different types of statuses and notify the leads of the project about the emerging problem. If a certain team player is stuck on a certain work issue for example.

2. Time in Status

Time in Status  - add-on from Atlassian Marketplace, which lets you to get Cycle and Lead time by setting Status Groups. You can configure it from your account at the Column Manager with the drop-down list of the statuses. At the status group column, time will be summarized in accordance with custom statuses. 

For example, if you set the statuses for the Cycle time, you can eventually see the total time for different “in progress” stages. For instance, if you are using the 'Jira Software Development' workflow, for your team the work on issue starts at 'In Progress' status, and completed when it moves from 'In Review' to 'Done'. So the Cycle time column will include 'In Progress' and 'In Review' statuses.

You can customize your reports with Cycle or Lead Tіme:

• choose the necessary issue list from projects, sprints, apply flexible filters with tags, 
• set the appropriate date range and data format, 
• exclude non-working hours from the Cycle or Lead Time calculation with multi-calendar. 

A custom report can be placed on the main Jira dashboard with the special Gadget tool.

In addition to the main report of this app, you can use such report types for Cycle or Lead Time as:

• Average Cycle or Lead Tіme (at the report Average time), 

• Cycle and Lead Time for each assignee (at the report Assignee time), 

• Cycle or Lead Tіme per Date (report Time in Status per Date), 

• Status Count — how many times the issue was at the statuses from Status Group. 

Users can analyze all these reports in details by exporting data to Excel or Google Sheets (XLSX or CSV format).

3. Time Between Statuses

Time Between Statuses (Cloud & Server) is also the app from Atlassian Marketplace but has some differences from the previous one. It measures connections in workflow, through a transition time in specific issues. This app helps to find the problem area and informs about it in time. So you can quickly fix it. 

You can count Cycle and Lead Time by setting start/stop and pause statuses in the configuration manager. To detail the calculation conditions you should select the first/last transition to/from status. It gives the timer more flexibility. 

 This plugin also allows you to calculate status to status time for other statuses that are part of the workflow.

With a large number of processes, an extremely useful feature is the ability to get visual alerts. So you can set up Warning time limits. If too much time is spent on a specific issue, the system will send an email notification to the specified admin. You can also set the Critical time limit. This is a kind of final warning and can highlight the project manager of a serious problem in how the workflow goes. The opportunity to identify, or to prevent a problem, helps to avoid significant losses.

You can customize your Cycle and Lead Time reports by adjusting the app interface fields such as: 

• Type of Project
• Date range
• Time Format
• Multi Calendar (to configure non-working hours and different calendars.)

At the Issue View Panel, you can visualize transition time for a specific issue. It's a progress bar with a green, yellow, or red zone. Time Between Statuses also allows you to export data you need to analyze Cycle and Lead Time in more detail with the tools you need.

It is very important to accurately monitor and save time in the workflow. There are two important concepts in this area: Cycle Time and Lead Time. To get them you can use built-in solution Control Chart or solutions from Atlassian Marketplace. Our SaaSJet team offers such solutions as Time in Status and Time Between Statuses. 

If you monitor Cycle and Lead Time, write in comments which tools you use. If you do not, add Cycle and Lead Time to the analysis of the team's effectiveness. Based on this review, choose the tool that best suits you and meets your needs. Try one of these solutions and let us know which one approaches you better! Hope this article will help you to analyze a Cycle and Lead Time more effectively.

[Ahmed Mohssen]

Great tool

[Sriphanikrishna Chinnapuvvula]

Awesome....great way for the teams to improve

[John Morales]

Does the solution provide the capability to generate the following report.....

[Zoryana Bohutska _SaaSJet_]

Hi @John Morales 

You can try the Pivot table feature in Time in Status for Jira Cloud:

1. Go to Pivot table view 

2. Set Fields

3. As the result you will get such data

Hope this will help you

Regards

[John Morales]

@Zoryana Bohutska _SaaSJet_  Thank you for the reply back. We are using Jira Software Datacenter Edition. Do you have a "Time in Status for Jira Data Center" version? If yes, do you have a free trial to evaluate the solution?

[Zoryana Bohutska _SaaSJet_]

@John Morales, Unfortunately, we don't have a version for Data Center now. But we are considering to add it to this product roadmap. Thank you for the request.

[Joshua Vosper]

These are nice charts for sure, especially the Control Chart, but these do not directly address reporting on Cycle Time and Lead Time. The Control Chart gets close, but you have to drill down in order to get the information for gleaning the Lead Time.

What I have longed for in Jira, for YEARS, are distribution charts in Jira for these two metrics. The concept of these charts is pervasive in Kanban certification courses but their respective incorporation into Jira has never come to fruition.

IMHO adding them to Jira would improve Jira's alignment with Kanban.

[John Morales]

We leverage eazyBI for Jira to capture our Agile Metrics. The solution is powerful and provide flexibility to establish insights. The solution is advance and requires effort to learn but once you do the impossible becomes possible.

[Joshua Vosper]

eazyBI for Jira is nice; I've used it in a past life. Very powerful, but with that power comes great difficulty But it would suffice in computing Lead and Cycle time values.

That said, I think that truer Kanban reports on Kanban related metrics should be native to Jira. But that's my 2 cents.

[Vineela AK]

Hi ,

I am trying to use this Time between statuses app but it is giving an error as "An unexpected error". Can some one guide me how to use this app

[Prabhu Palanisamy _Onward_]

Regarding Marketplace Reporter, Atlassian Marketplace allowing screen scraping of app details and have external apps storing the data is concerning. I don't think Marketplace terms should allow to do this. This should be similar to LinkedIn or social channels where export and storing of user data is not allowed.

While I see the value in such a tool like Marketplace Reporter, I see several concerns of how this would impact marketplace vendors as its outside of the Atlassian Marketplace.

Curious to hear feedback from Atlassian team and other Marketplace vendors.

[Valeriia_Havrylenko_SaaSJet]

Hello  👋 @Vineela AK  
Apparently it is related to the installation. As I can see from the screenshot, you don't have the app installed yet.
Please install or reinstall the app.

For more detailed information, I suggest you book a demo session or write to support to get an answer right away!

Hope it helps 😌
Valeria