Comparing estimates to time taken

michael_topic December 2, 2022

Is there a native way to compare story point estimates and time tracked for issues in Jira? I just need a number to show how far out our estimates turned out to be compared to the actual time spent on issues. Ideally, I'd like a rolled up average for each sprint and rolling average for the team.

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Trudy Claspill
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December 2, 2022

Hello @michael_topic 

Are you equating your Story Point values to some measure of time?

There is not a native solution specifically for comparing Story Points and Time Spent as these are really two different types of values with no absolute correlation natively in Jira. 

An issue may be worked on in multiple sprints. There is no native solution that automatically sums up the worklogs entered on an issue just during the time period of a given sprint. You might be able to create an Automation rule to do that and save the information in custom field(s) in an issue.

michael_topic December 6, 2022

Thanks for the response. Yes, we were notionally equating story points to hours. I think I read somewhere that people often do, for the purposes of time tracking. Sounds like Jira has no out of the box solution to evaluate estimates and outcomes. Thanks again for your answer. It was very clear.

Trudy Claspill
Community Leader
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December 6, 2022

If you want to estimate the time it will take to complete an item, instead use the Original Estimate field. Since that is a time field, and Time Spent is a time field, comparing the two will be much easier.

Story points should not be equated to time.

Atlassian has an article on estimation that you may find helpful here:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/estimation

michael_topic December 7, 2022

Thanks for the tip. Is there anything native in Jira that can compare Original Estimate to Time Spent, or is that something I need to keep doing in a spreadsheet, or with a paid plug in?

Trudy Claspill
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December 7, 2022

The Work Ratio field will tell you what percentage of Original Estimate has been consumed by Time Spent. If Time Spent exceeds Original Estimate than the percentage will be over 100%. The field will have a value only if there is a value in Original Estimate.

Screen Shot 2022-12-07 at 5.20.38 PM.png

michael_topic December 8, 2022

Oh Perfect! That's exactly what I needed to find. Thank you so much.

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Karolina Wons_SaaSJet
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December 23, 2022

Hello @michael_topic 

As an alternative, you can read the use case on how to compare story points with the time spent with the help of Time in Status for Jira Cloud.

2022-12-23_15-19-55.png

This add-on is developed by my SaaSJet team. So you can ask me any questions you are interested in.

I hope you find it helpful too.

michael_topic January 3, 2023

Thank you. That's very interesting.

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