How to track Spikes in Jira graphs and reports?

[Ryan Johnson D]

Is there a Jira report or graph to show why a team's velocity and points dipped because of Spikes in a sprint? Spikes in my understanding use time like hours to estimate level of effort of research.  Therefore, the velocity drops, and there are less points completed, and stakeholders ask why was there a drop in the velocity the last two sprints! How do you show in the graph how the spikes contribute to that?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Ryan Johnson D 

You seem to describe your team is using a time-box for spikes, rather than sizing them with story points.  Thus the team "commitment" at sprint planning is potentially lower than your expected velocity.  (Of note, some teams also use a fixed sizing for spikes in order to time-box them.)

I do not know of any built-in charting to show extra annotation for the issues. 

This topic seems worthy of a conversation with stakeholders to understand how capacity (and sprint planning choices) impact velocity and value delivery.  Perhaps consider describing this to stakeholders at your sprint reviews, and possibly adding an indicator to the summary (e.g. "SPIKE -- trying to..." so that you can show the Jira built-in sprint reports with the summary visible.

If you still want this on a burn chart, please investigate the marketplace for reports that can do this type of annotation...or export the Jira data to build your own reporting to account for this impact.

Kind regards,
Bill