How to show the continuous amoung of issues in backlog and leaving backlog

[Bjarne Huuck]

Hey all!

First of all, I'm fully aware that there are an approximate 400000 questions in these forums about similar issues but none of them seem to quite do it for what I want to do. I tried playing around with different JQL queries and reports but couldn't figure out how to do what I want to do, which is rather simple:

I want to be able to see for every sprint (Which is 2 weeks in my team) how many issues were in the backlog and how many issues from the backlog were done in this timeframe. Ideally represented in a table of sorts.

I know that the cumulative flow diagram does something similar, however for what I want to do I need definite numbers, not a rough overview (With ~200 items in the backlog, it's impossible for me to see how many issues there are exactly in the flow diagram).

Is there some simple way to get what I want?

Thanks in advance!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Bjarne Huuck -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

First thing, I am using Jira Cloud, not Data Center, and my suggestions are based on what I know about Jira generally.  Please test with your site.  With that out of the way...

What do you want to do with these issue counts?

For display only, you could use saved JQL filters and a dashboard to show the counts with gadgets, such as filter results.

To get the numbers in an email, you could use an automation rule, using lookup issues or the REST API (if the expected count is above 100) to send the counts in a message.

For more advanced reporting, you could investigate marketplace addon apps.

To get the numbers in an external application, you could call the REST API functions from that application, if possible.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Bjarne Huuck]

Hi Bill, thanks for your reply!

First of all, I'm very new to Jira and Confluence as a whole, so I'm not 100% sure about the implications of what it means to have a data center. I only selected it because the selection menu mentioned that it's only Jira Cloud of there's atlassian in the url, which for me it wasn't. I'm assuming it works very similarly to your version.

Now onto my problem: One of my colleagues brought in an excel sheet from one of her supervisors that aims to predict the future workload and evolution of backlog-items over time, based on the amount of past issues completed + in the backlog. 

For this, I need to know, how many issues were in the backlog during sprint xx and how many issues were completed during sprint xx. Hence, I only aim to use it for display, not e-mail or any of the likes.

I tried using normal filters but I couldn't really find a way to get the numbers over time. Is there maybe some simple macro to just show the exact number of issues per week?

Best regards

[Bill Sheboy]

Short answer: no.

Most of that information is in the issue histories (unless one deletes issues), but it is difficult to access with built in features.  The control chart can be used, as you noted.  There are also Atlassian marketplace apps which can report on history data if you want to investigate those.

[Bjarne Huuck]

Thanks a lot for your help! :)