Building a powerful Kanban dashboard in Jira with Great Gadgets app
Kanban is a popular agile framework suitable for both operations and development teams. It does not matter if you are a support team handling issues reported by customers, an internal service desk team or a company that delivers pizza, Kanban helps you visualize both the process (the workflow) and the actual work passing through that process. Also, it helps you identify potential bottlenecks in your process and fix them so work can flow through it cost-effectively at an optimal speed or throughput.
A Kanban team that uses Jira for tracking the Kanban project should also have a team dashboard for tracking their project and work, for having all the metrics & charts centralized in one place. Then, this dashboard could be used as "information radiator" or being displayed on TV screens in the open space.
Here is a list of gadgets that can be used to build a powerful dashboard in Jira for tracking a Kanban project in an effective way.
Team Wallboard Gadget – displays the Kanban task board of the team showing the current status of the issues and their current assignee. The WIP limits set on the board columns are also displayed and considered.
This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira. It uses colored cards to display the issue based on their hierarchy: green for stories and tasks, yellow for sub-tasks and purple for epics.
Alternatively, you could use the Agile Wallboard Gadget offered by Jira although it might no longer be available on Jira Cloud.
Cumulative Flow Diagram - Displays the cumulative flow diagram (CFD) for the issues in an agile board or filter. It is a stacked area chart that shows the number of tasks in each column of the board or in each status category along the time. When you view the data for a particular day, you will know how many work items were present in each column at the end of that day.
The cumulative flow diagram (CFD) is one of the most advanced analytics in agile project management. Use this gadget to determine how stable your flow is and to understand where you need to focus on making your process more predictable. It gives you quantitative and qualitative insight into past and existing problems.
Such a chart is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Reported vs Done Chart – Shows the line chart of reported issues and done issues along the time. This chart tells you how your team handles the workload in time. It gives you a clear indication if your team manages to resolve issues fast enough for maintaining the backlog size in acceptable limits.
It can reveal potential team capacity problems, overloading periods or poor team performance that might require corrective actions.
Such a chart is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira. You can generate the chart not only by Issue Count but also by sum of Story Points, Original Time Estimate or by any other numerical custom field defined in your Jira instance. This is useful if the issues in your backlog do not have the same size / weight.
Control Chart Gadget – shows the issues done in a specified time period along with their cycle time or lead time in a scatter plot chart. You can use this gadget to identify the issues that took longer than expected – the ones that are over the average time or over the threshold that you set. Simply hovering the mouse over a point from the chart will display a tool-tip with the issue key, cycle time and the date when its cycle was finished.
The rolling average line indicates the trend, while the standard deviation helps you identify the outlier issues.
It can also display a data tab, with more details about each issue. Also, it can be configured to generate the chart based on cycle time, lead time or time between two statuses. This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
WIP Aging Chart Gadget - shows the "in-progress" issues from an agile board or filter along with their age (time in status or time in board column) in scatter-plot chart.
You can use this gadget to easily identify the issues that stay longer than expected in workflow status. Simply hovering the mouse over an issue from the chart will display a tool-tip with the issue key and its age.
It can also display a Data tab with the issues and their time spent (age) in their current status or board column. This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
WIP Run Chart Gadget – shows the amount of work in progress (WIP) issues from an agile board or filter over time for a team or a process.
Use this gadget to identify trends or patterns in your work process and establish whether or not your team has reached an optimal work pace. It can also help you monitor and control the WIP level, which is an important aspect of Kanban and other agile frameworks.
The chart can also display a trend line, which can help you identify the direction and rate of change of your WIP level. This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Cycle Time Trend – calculates and displays the average “Cycle Time” or “Lead Time” for the past time intervals. Use this gadget to see how fast your team delivers in time, how quickly the issues are marked as done along the time.
It can also display a data tab, with more details about each issue. Also, it can be configured to generate the chart based on cycle time, lead time or time between two statuses. This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Lead Time Histogram – calculates the average “Cycle Time” or “Lead Time” of the issue from a filter or Kanban board and displays the distribution of the values as a series of bars. It helps you determine how the team performs along the time, how many issues had their process time in acceptable ranges and how many did not.
This chart is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Kanban Velocity / Throughput – calculates and displays the team’s velocity (throughput) for past time intervals and the average in term of number of issues (cards) delivered in a given period of time. It helps you determine how the team performs along the time.
This chart is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Issue Formula Gadget – shows the result of a math formula (like COUNT, SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, etc) applied against the field of the issues from specified filter. It helps you calculate and display key-numbers like total unresolved critical issues or backlog size.
The result can be displayed in various ways: as a number, number colored by value, as gauge chart or on a 5-star scale.
This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Advanced Issue Formula Gadget – allows displaying up to 6 numbers calculated based on simple or more complex math formulas applied against the fields or count of the issues from multiple Jira filters. You can use this gadgets to display project key-numbers like percentage of work done or issue reopening ratio.
This gadget is offered by Great Gadgets app for Jira.
Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget – this is an awesome gadget offered by Great Gadgets app that lets you create simple to complex statistics with drag & drop just like in Microsoft Excel. By using this gadget, you can complete your dashboard with multidimensional statistics, heat-map tables, or custom charts of various types that show issue counts, the sum of numeric fields, or percentages.
Here are just a few examples of some stats and charts that you could display with this gadget:
In conclusion, with the gadgets offered by Great Gadgets app you can build an effective and powerful dashboard for tracking your Kanban project. All the gadgets offered by this app are wallboard-mode compatible, which means that you can display them on big TV screens in hallways and open space.
Great Gadgets app by StonikByte (an Atlassian Platinum Marketplace Partner) is compatible with Jira Cloud, Server and Data Center, as well as with Confluence Cloud.
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Danut M _StonikByte_
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