Lead Time

[Karthik Balasubramanian]

Hi Friends,

I want to pullout a cycle time report from JIRA between two columns (Analysis & Done).

Can any one of you suggest how to achieve this?

Thanks,

Karthik

[Tarun Sapra]

Control chart is something you can use.

About the Control Chart
The Control Chart shows the Cycle Time (or Lead Time) for your product, version, or sprint. It takes the time spent by each issue in a particular status (or statuses), and maps it over a specified period of time. The average, rolling average, and standard deviation for this data are shown.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver/control-chart-938845628.html

[Karthik Balasubramanian]

Hi Tarun,

Thanks. It was useful.

[Tarun Sapra]

Your welcome. Could you please accept/up-vote the answer so that other's are helped.

[Karl Rohde]

Tarun, Cycle Time and Lead Time are different metrics. CT is how long an issue is in a certain status. LT is how long it takes an issue to be completed from the time of creation.

Any ideas on how to actually get lead time?

[Tarun Sapra]

Hello @Karl Rohde

Indeed, LT is the sum of CTs from the point of creation upto delivery/completion.  I suggest if the control chart is not able to give you the answer that you want, then you can trying using reporting plugins like betterExcel, Dataplane or eazyBI. You can also use ScriptRunner to get this information on a scripted custom field.

[Karl Rohde]

I found the best approach (without plugins) is to create a filter of all “done” stories (or whatever issue type you want to dig into). Then export to MS Excel. Then calculate the difference between created date and resolved date. Then average the results.  

If there is a another way I’d love to know.

[Tarun Sapra]

Hello @Karl Rohde

Taking the excel export is indeed the best approach without requiring the the plugins.

[Steve McGee]

To have any chance at using lead time to give you enough predictability to make service level agreements (one of the genuine benefits of the Kanban Method), you'd need to:

1. Create different 'Issue' types - not at all related to epic or task, but types based on customer requests (front end feature change, edit page, bug fix, create new functionality, etc.)
2. Filter by type, and then by state or states you want to measure elapsed time for (lead/cycle time)
3. Export so you get each issue with the times, or start and end dates for the set of states you want to measure.

Can't do that.

Here's what's strange to me:

Better Excel has no reference to Lead Time in its Community area...
Neither do the others except for EazyBi. Not sure if that works.

And, let's say I only need the manager to be able to get this data. With Cloud, at least, I'll have to pay for every Jira user to have the plug in. That means it will not get approved  by my company. So that means Jira has taken up space in the company but will always hold us back from getting the real benefits from Kanban.

[Peter Lee]

I might be completely off point, but I'm pretty sure you can just add the backlog state into the control chart?

The control chart lets you select whatever columns you want to contribute to cycle time. It also lets you use quick filters and swimlanes to reduce the selection of items contributing to the cycle time report etc.

Since cycle time and lead time are the same if you are measure all processes you can just select all your columns??? the calculation works out to be Lead time (???)

Also resolution time reports should also be an option.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-resolution-time-is-calculated-278072482.html

[Andrew Morris]

Peter, I agree with you. Has anyone given you any pushback on this suggestion?

Our agile team is spending some time setting up all these automations to track lead time and cycle time, and I am confused as to why we aren't just using the Control Chart.

But maybe there's something here that you and I aren't thinking of? I don't know. Maybe someone can clear this up?

If I select Backlog and ALL other statuses on the control chart, am I not effectively viewing the Lead Time now? And then I remove Backlog from the control chart and bam, I'm tracking cycle time?

Again.. maybe I'm missing something here. But why are we trying to make this so complicated? It seems to be functionality that already exists.

[Peter Lee]

Hi Andrew,

No pushback on the use, I've actually tied the control chart into our regular monthly delivery reports. People need to use the control chart and call out any outliers, their reason for occurring and what they are doing to address longer term.

The challenge is just people building experience in reading and interpreting this chart.

@Andrew Morris to help others find the answer I've re-written my previous comment into a specific answer, if you agree with it would you mind upvoting it?

Thanks

[Zoryana Bohutska _SaaSJet_]

Hi,

Alternatively, you can try the application Time Between Statuses.
It helps to get the Cycle and Lead Time of your Jira Cloud issues.

Holp it helps.

[Danut M [StonikByte]]

Hi @Karthik Balasubramanian , 

Try our Great Gadgets app.

In the many dashboard gadgets included, there are Control Chart and Cycle Time Trend gadgets, which are based on Jira filters and are fully customizable. You can configure them to calculate by specific statuses, which allows calculating Lead Time, Cycle time or time between statuses. Optionally, both gadgets can display a Data table, showing the issue and their individual data.   

Cycle Time / Lead Time Control Chart showing issues that took longer than expected: 

Weekly Average Cycle Time / Lead Time and the trend:

Danut

[Peter Lee]

Jira already provides two options, although it is not clearly called out.

1) Control Charts

2) Resolution Time Reports

Control Charts

The control chart lets you select whatever columns you want to contribute to cycle time. It also lets you use quick filters and swimlanes to reduce the selection of items contributing to the cycle time report etc.

Since cycle time and lead time are the same if you are measure all processes you can just select all your columns.

If you do that the calculation is Lead time

(ps. if you aren't a purist and don't feel like there is only one true lead time, you'll find that there are many types of lead time in the manufacturing space, and the difference is all about when you consider the start and end of lead time).

Resolution Time Reports.

The resolution time report lets you select a period the report over and the sampling rate (buckets) - eg monthly, weekly etc etc.

The link below provides the specific on how Resolution Time is calculated

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-resolution-time-is-calculated-278072482.html

Note: I mentioned this in a comment but am moving it to an answer so that it can hopefully be accepted as a specific answer.

[Danut M [StonikByte]]

Our Great Gadgets add-on offers a Cycle Time Trend Gadget that might be helpful for you. It uses a Jira filter as input can can be configured to calculate lead time,  cycle time or time between two statuses. The gadget can also display a data table, which contains the cycle of every issue. 

[Zane eazyBI Support]

HiThat is true, you may use eazyBI to analyze reaction time, lead time or time between two transitions.
Out of the box, you will get a measure for issue resolution time and issue close time. But you may define calculated measures to get time between two transition date which represent lead time in your business case. For example, calculate time from entering "Open" status for the first time, till entering status "Delivered to customer" for the last time (see picture below).

You may check out eazyBI demo account for some sample reports, like issue resolution time intervals, resolution time boxplot chart, issue age reports and other.
We have also demo account for Service Desk reports.

Best,

Zane / support@eazyBI.com

[Steve McGee]

As far all I have found in multiple searches, only EazyBi can do this.

One question - what does 'Average resolution days' mean? Isn't the number generated from resolution date minus created date? That wouldn't be an average.

[Zane eazyBI Support]

You are right; Average resolution days return time between creation date and resolution date, it could be used to represent Lead Time.

For a single issue, measure returns total resolution time. For a set of issues, measure returns an average resolution time over those issues, and this is why it is called Average resolution days. For example, you may use measure Average resolution days and Time dimension to see average lead time for issues which are resolved in each period.

Some report examples for resolution time (lead time) analyses you may check out in eazyBI demo account (https://eazybi.com/accounts/1000/dashboards/4553-jira-issues-dashboard)

[Michael]

@Zane eazyBI Support I do not see the report you show in your screenshot in the demo. I have been searching high and low for a very simple cycle time report, but can't seem to find one or accurately create one.

If I'm not mistaken, the cycle time is the time from the start of the work until the work is live.

Your image looks like it might be able to help me. You Custom LT Measures specifically. Your Custom LT column looks like it is the date the work start and the next column looks like the date the work was completed. The last column is the time in between.

Can you let me know how you created those custome LT measures?

[Zane eazyBI Support]

Hi @Michael

The report from the screenshot was custom made to illustrate the idea that you can also build custom calculations for lead time. I am sorry you were looking for it in eazyBI Demo account.

To build a report as in the screenshot, you may define new calculated measures, one to show the start of a cycle marked by a transition to status, one to indicate the end of a cycle marked by another transition to status, and one to get time between those two dates (lead time).

In the following example for custom lead time, I will use a transition to status "Selected for Development" as the start and transition to status "Delivered" as the end of lead time.

1) Start of LT, the first time entered status "Selected for Development".

([Measures].[Transition to status first date],
[Transition Status].[Selected for Development],
[Time].CurrentHierarchy.DefaultMember)

2) End of LT, the last time entered status "Delivered".

([Measures].[Transition to status last date],
[Transition Status].[Delivered],
[Time].CurrentHierarchy.DefaultMember)

3) Custom LT calculated as time between two dates.

NonZero(Avg(
Filter(
  --set of issues resolved in selected period
  Descendants([Issue].CurrentHierarchyMember,[Issue].[Issue]),
  DateInPeriod(
    --end date and time of LT
    ([Measures].[Transition to status last date],
    [Transition Status].[Delivered],
    [Time].CurrentHierarchy.DefaultMember),
    —selected period in Time dimension
    [Time].CurrentHierarchyMember)
  ),
  --calculate lead time for each issue
  DateDiffDays(
    --start date and time of LT
    ([Measures].[Transition to status first date],
      [Transition Status].[Selected for Development],
      [Time].CurrentHierarchy.DefaultMember),
    --end date and time of LT
    ([Measures].[Transition to status last date],
      [Transition Status].[Delivered],
      [Time].CurrentHierarchy.DefaultMember)
  )
  --transform days to minutes for representing as ##d ##h ##m
  *24*60
))

Set measure formatting to ##d ##h ##m.

More details on how to create calculated measures and used functions are in the eazyBI documentation: https://docs.eazybi.com/eazybijira/analyze-and-visualize/calculated-measures-and-members