Time management with Jira: 7 options to save your time ⏳🚀

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Prioritizing tasks, limiting distractions, meeting deadlines, balancing work and personal life – that's all about time management. Statistics say you can save up to 2 hours of time by spending 10-12 minutes on planning the day. Jira tools can help you to multiply your success from time management. Roadmap, Control Chart, time tracking, and solutions from the marketplace are on the agenda. Let's move on!

How Jira helps with time management (built-in features)

Project management is much easier if you learn to organize and schedule your time in a way that works for your team. Especially if you're working on multiple projects. Jira can help you to stay organized and meet deadlines. It's equipped with great functionality – just make sure you know about it and use it for your progress.

Jira Roadmap

As its name suggests, Jira roadmap is your navigator for planning and monitoring of large scale of work within some project. Here you can break down the bigger work elements – epics into the smaller ones – child issues. You can create as many pieces as you need. The most widespread issue types are tasks, stories, and bugs. Also, you can create other issue types according to your team's needs.

Visual bars demonstrate the development of a product through time.

How to use Jira Roadmap

1. Activate the roadmap if it’s not visible: go to the project sidebar and choose Project settings > Features.
2. Click + Create epic and enter the name for it.
3. Click + Create child issue to add smaller tasks and enter the names.
4. Add assignee, attachments, and more to each epic and child issue.
5. Adjust the epic's length or drag it to modify the start and due dates to keep your roadmap current.

Find more info here: Roadmaps in Jira Software.

Start/Due date issue fields

One more option to plan your time in Jira is Start/Due dates. Each Jira issue can be assigned a target start date/end date, an actual start date/end date. It’s a great way to set timings for your project items. 

To start scheduling, open the issue and select the date from the calendar.

If there are no start/due dates fields, contact your Jira administrator. The Due date field can only be populated by people with the Schedule Issues permission.

Jira Control Chart

A control chart is another option to optimize your workflow, make more in less time and meet the deadlines. A Control Chart can help you figure out if data from the current sprint can be applied to predict future results. It’s a great tool to evaluate cycle and lead time. 

• The lower the variance in an issue's cycle time, the more confident you can be that your project pipeline will function smoothly. 
• Strong leaps on a Control Chart diagram signal problems with your team's workflow. It could be: long waiting lines, delays, and paused downtimes.

You may analyze your team's past activity and use the mean (or median) as a predictor of future performance. 

Built-in time tracking in Jira

Time tracking can help to increase productivity when done wisely. It assists in detecting delays in the working process and directing assistance when needed. This gives managers total visibility into how much time is spent on a project and meeting business goals. 

How Jira time tracking works

1. Think about how long it will take to complete the work item. Enter that time into the original estimate filed.
2. Record your actual time when you work on the issue.
   • Open the issue and select ••• > Log work.
   • Enter your time in 2w 7d 5h 30m format – (w) weeks, (d) days, (h) hours, and (m) minutes.
   • Edit or delete your time logs when needed if you have permission.
   
3. Align your efforts towards the remaining estimate to complete the work in time, or to know that piece requires more time to finish it.

Advanced tools for time management 

To have better time reports and develop cost-saving strategies, check up on the following solutions. Each of them is developed to enhance Jira functionality and to simplify your team performance.

Time tracking tools (Tempo, Clockwork)

Tempo Timesheets - Jira Time Tracking allows multiple ways to automate tracking time and advanced reporting, which includes:

• Customization and automated suggestions without disruption from work;
• Tracking time from keyboard shortcuts or My work;
• Integration with Google Calendar and Office 365;
• Custom reports with granular data and time spent insights

Clockwork Automated Time Tracking & Timesheets Pro is another automated time tracking tool which helps to:

• Set automatic, clocked, or manual time tracking;
• Regulate time tracking to start/stop on a designated status;
• Get reports with time spent per issue or assignee and export timesheets;
• Create time logs for other users with appropriate permissions.

How to get time spent without time tracking?

Managers frequently have trouble with tracking their team's time. Forcing employees to log their work isn’t always a way to go. If you’re looking for a tool with automated time calculation for issues, check out Time in Status for Jira Cloud.  

For example, you can find out how long the specific issue has spent in each status per particular employee:

Other popular reports are:

• Average time
• Cycle and lead time
• Assignee Time per Status with pivot table

You can get a variety of time reports in both table and graph format. Also, there is the ability to monitor customized reports from the app on the Jira dashboard. 

Takeaway

Jira is one of the best places to make time management easier for you.  It can be a great fit for a wide range of options – whether you need to monitor time-consuming, set priorities, plan your work, find bottlenecks, or meet project deadlines. 

Try to enhance your time management with the Time in Status for Jira Cloud or other described solutions or suggest your own tips in the comments.

[Jose Luis Gaitan]

Thank you, @Julia Shcherbyna _SaaSJet_ . Really useful information.

[Ollie Guan]

Excellent practice!@Julia Shcherbyna _SaaSJet_ 

[Serosoft Jira Administrator]

Nice Tips!