Card age for Jira

[Daniel Reyzman]

Is there a way to show on a card how long a card has been on the board. I believe trello has this ability to reflect the days on the board. 

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Daniel - We have done something similar but placing Quick Filters on the board to help show stale tickets. One looks like this:

status was in ("Backlog Pullable") before startOfDay(-15) AND statusCategory != Done

In this example, Backlog Pullable is the first column on our board - all cards must pass through that status - so this shows cards that have been started (left the first column) but have not been completed (reached the last column of Done). You should do that with whatever statuses in your workflow that you like. 

But as Bill points out, if you allow cards to move backwards in your workflow, it will not take into consideration the time that the card was previously in that status. 

You might look at an add-on like Nave to help report those. 

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Age of WIP (work in progress) is a well known concept to help manage and improve workflow for teams, especially teams using Kanban. Unfortunately, that report is not available with out-of-the-box JIRA.  There appear to be several marketplace vendors who have it, and you can check those if you wish.

Of note about the "days in column" feature: several users have encountered errors in the day count being inflated, as it appears to become confused when issues move backward in workflow (such as for rework).  I have seen at least one support ticket on this, which was closed/no-repro as the steps could not consistently reproduce the defect in JIRA boards.  Please watch for this issue using the feature.

Best regards,

Bill

[Daniel Reyzman]

Hi Bill,

Do you have any recommendations for total age of WIP tools?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Daniel Reyzman 

TL;DR: Sorry, I don’t have any recommended age of WIP tools that I have used with Jira.

I haven’t used any of the add-on tools that @John Funk and others note... although the stuff from Nave looks comprehensive and promising.

Before buying anything else, please pause to consider the problem the team is trying to solve.  If this is a short-term issue of stale WIP, the quick filter approach described may help.  Watch things not moving, for example issues stuck in any status could be flagged with a filter and color coding:

NOT status CHANGED AFTER -2d AND statusCategory != Done

For the whole workflow (board), use your initial board status as a starting point, as John suggested, and maybe have quick filters for different time ranges: days, weeks, etc. to monitor the urgency of the issue.

If issues frequently move backwards, consider how the team identifies, manages, and reduces rework.  John notes how he chooses workflow steps and the way he records defects to prevent backward flow.  Process mapping and improving exit policies may be of more help than tool changes.

In any case, teams are different and have different needs... If your team regularly needs to watch age of WIP to succeed, consider acquiring a tool to make that simple and painless to see.

Best regards,

Bill

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Daniel Reyzman 

As an update... We decided to implement our own Age Of WIP using a custom field and automation rules.  Here is a how-to:

• Add a number custom field, such as AgeOfWip
• Add an automation rule to compute the value
  • Trigger: scheduled at your desired update frequency.  For example, once per day.
  • Branch on JQL: project = myProject AND statusCategory = "In Progress" ORDER BY Key
  • Action: edit your AgeOfWip field with the formula below.  The trick was getting the Status Category Changed Date field to work as a smart value.

{{#=}}ROUND({{issue.statuscategorychangedate.toDate.convertToTimeZone(reporter.timeZone).diff(now.convertToTimeZone(reporter.timeZone)).millis}} / (1000*60*60*24), 3){{/}}

• You can report on this field with Issues and Filters, or add it to your board's cards.  This computes in calendar days to 3 decimal places.  You can do this in business days/hours also, and that is more complicated.  Let me know if you want help doing that.

To learn more about the automation rules, please see this documentation:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/automate-your-jira-cloud-processes-and-workflows/

Best regards,

Bill

[Kian Stack Mumo Systems · Accepted solution]

Daniel,

You can show days in column, but there is not a "days on board"  item.

Why do need that information?

Thanks,

Kian

[Daniel Reyzman]

There are a number of cards being worked on the board between development and QA, and it would be helpful to see the age of the cards on the board. That if a card is being missed

[Kian Stack Mumo Systems]

As I  mentioned, you can show how long a ticket has been inside of a column. Would this be sufficient for you?

Thanks,

Kian

[Daniel Reyzman]

That won't solve the problem, because the cards bounce back and forth a lot, so need total time on the board

[John Funk]

If you are looking for total time on the board - I would use a status that is something like Ready or Ready to Start. This would be a status after your Backlog when you have vetted the issue and decided it is ready to be worked on.

Then track time when it leaves that status/column - like I do in my example below. The card should NEVER move backwards to Ready once it has been started. 

Can you describe a little more why cards move back and forth so frequently? That's a basic violation of Kanban principles if you are using those. 

[Daniel Reyzman]

There are columns for backlog, then it moves into development, then it moves into QA and there the card goes through code review and QA, if issues are found it moves back to dev. The purpose of the board is to show where the item is from a capacity allocation view, I will look into add ins on the jira board

[John Funk]

Here's what we do:

 Backlog > Backlog Pullable (we call the column options and is used for Backlog cards that have been vetted and ready to go) > Architecture Design > Development > Code Review > Merge > Test > Deploy > Done

So cards ALWAYS move forward. If it goes to Code Review and the reviewer finds something - it stays in that column until the developer and reviewer have agreed that the new code works correctly and can move forward. So code staying in Code Review a long time lets us know that there were problems found. 

When the card gets move to Test, then the QA Analyst tests it. If he/she finds something, then either a new Bug or a new Defect card is created. Bugs allow the original card to keep moving and get deployed. The bug will get fixed later and deployed when ready. A defect is a sub-task type can causes the original card to not move out of Test until the Defect (all defects found) have been fixed. Then the original card can get deployed.

That's what we do - I hope it helps a little. Cards never move backwards and we can gather metrics with much greater precision!

[Bloompeak Support]

Hi @Daniel Reyzman ,

It is not possible to show the time passed on the cards. But it is possible to show it on the issue details page with add-ons. 

We developed Status Time add-on for this exact need.