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.

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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.    

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Alternatively, you could use the Agile Wallboard Gadget offered by Jira although it might no longer be available on Jira Cloud. 

Cumulative Flow DiagramDisplays 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.

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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.     

 

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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:

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Time In Status gadget – this is another useful gadget offered by Great Gadgets app which can easily calculate and display how long issues stayed in each workflow status, status category, or board column. The results can be displayed as a pie chart, bar chart, or line chart.

Tracking the time in status for your issues is important because it helps you identify where the delays are and what parts of the process flow should be optimized. Using the Time In Status Gadget offered by Great Gadgets app will help you understand how long tasks spend in each stage of the workflow, so you can identify bottlenecks and understand the team performance.

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This gadget lets you calculate the total time or the average time, and it can also group the data by different criteria, such as assignee, project, or priority.

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Additionally, it provides a Data tab, with details about the time spent in every status, for each individual issue, that can be easily exported in CSV format.

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Conclusion

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.

5 comments

Bill Sheboy
Rising Star
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Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
April 15, 2021

Hi @Danut M _StonikByte_ 

Thanks for the article and add-on!  Several of our teams use your product to help make workflow issues more visible.  Here are a few, "yes, and..." items for dashboards using Great Gadgets:

  • We use the Issue Formula Gadget to make work in progress counts (WIP) visible. Set next to the Control Chart to show build cycle time (CT) and Kanban Velocity/Throughput, a team can get a good overview of their workflow: WIP/CT/Throughput.
  • The newly added Cycle Time Histogram is a great way to see CT distribution, and to find different work item types.  Those would appear as different high points in the distribution.
  • When paired with custom fields and automation for Jira (A4J), you can expand what is visible with the gadgets.  For example, we added an Age of WIP measure, shown with the Issue Formula Gadget) to find stale issues and "WIP debt" trending.

Best regards,

Bill

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Jack Brickey
Community Leader
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Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
June 13, 2021

This is an awesome article! I have used most of these gadgets and some of my favorite for sure. I will say that the control chart it’s not one of my favorites. It is always baffled me a bit and left me scratching my head.

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Bill Sheboy
Rising Star
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Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
June 14, 2021

Hi, @Jack Brickey 

One of the values I find from the scatter chart ("control chart" in Great Gadgets) is the ability to identify batching (shows as a vertical band of dots) and outlier impacts.  Those can be identified and drilled into, helping the team learn and experiment around improvements.

__Bill

batching.PNG

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Danut M _StonikByte_
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
November 16, 2021

@Jack Brickey: Please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnCFBoBpgr4. It explains our Control Chart gadget and how to use it. I hope this helps.

vasanth
Contributor
August 12, 2024

very good article , useful for Kanban teams 

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