Jira Image of the Day: Estimation Accuracy with the Time Tracking Report

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Concept Relates To

Application Type	Jira Work Management, Jira Software, Jira Core
Deployment Type	Jira Cloud, Jira Server, Jira Data Center

What is shown?

The built-in “Time Tracking Report” in business and software Jira projects

Visit: Project > Reports > Time Tracking Report

What can we learn?

As long as I can remember, I’ve been horrible at estimation. I constantly worry that the effort I estimate is incorrect and it will negatively impact my team members or delay others relying on me to complete their work. Until AI can reliably estimate work for us, I use the built-in “Time Tracking Report” in Jira to measure how close (or far) my estimates are to reality.

The report shows original time estimates and time spent for issues in a Jira project. You can further segment the issues in the report by a specific fix version if desired. The bar graph at the top shows the issues are 75% complete. What do you notice about the progress information? Only 7 of the 12 issues have estimates! When data is missing, Jira can’t report information accurately. The completion calculation doesn’t include the additional work at the bottom of the list.

Next, the report calculates the accuracy of estimates by comparing them to actual time spent. For example, for DEVELOP-18, the estimate is 1 hour and the time logged is 1 hour and 30 minutes. The 30 minute difference is reflected in the “Accuracy” column on the right of the table. This metric is only useful if users are logging their time and updating issue statuses. The additional time spent in DEVELOP-18 is reflected in the overall accuracy calculation at the top.

Luckily, this data is only for demonstration purposes. If this were a real progress report, I’d be worried. The work is shown as 75% complete but no issues are in their final status and 7 issues haven’t even started work yet! Additionally, the time logged on DEVELOP-10 and DEVELOP-16 is much higher than the estimate and there’s still more work to do. As an assignee or a team lead, I’d want to know why those tasks turned out to be so much more effort than expected. Did the requirements change? Was there a miscommunication? Is there a knowledge gap to address? Finally, DEVELOP-8 is reportedly “on track” but when the remaining 3 days of progress is logged, the overall report’s accuracy percentage will continue to plummet. I’m glad this report is available to give us this valuable insight!

Next time you’re struggling with estimation, remember that you aren’t alone, My trick: if there’s a similar task in the future, check previous tasks to use the those estimates and actuals as a reference. I make myself a little cheat sheet showing that last time I did task X it took Y hours. The goal is to provide your best guess today and improve accuracy over time.

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