Tracking scope changes and unplanned work with Insights for Jira Software Cloud

[#1]

Hi Folks! My name is Natalia from the Insights and Data Enablement team.

Over the past 18 months, we have been working to surface useful data-powered insights on the Scrum and Kanban Boards, Backlog and Deployments. With these insights, we want to help teams make timely decisions and drive better outcomes while planning and progressing their work.

We’ve recently expanded the burndown insight to include sprint scope changes, available on the Board in Jira Software Cloud for Scrum teams.

We know things don’t always go according to plan, so we wanted to give you more visibility of scope changes as your team’s sprint progresses.

Designed to be a companion to your daily stand-up, we hope the expanded burndown insight gives you more transparency over unplanned work. Scope change information should equip you with the right amount of detail to manage your team’s sprint priorities effectively. Faster decision-making will help your team achieve their sprint goals.

How can visibility of scope changes help my team?

Having visibility and a way to visualize your scope changes can help your team to:

• Track scope creep and unplanned work more effectively.

• Understand your team’s likelihood of successfully achieving sprint goals.

• Make data-driven prioritization decisions during your sprint.
  
  

For example, your team could consider absorbing unplanned work and scope changes as they come along. The information may help you decide how to break up work and carry it over to the next sprint, swapping urgent requests with previously committed tasks and moving tasks of similar sizes to the next sprint or the top of the backlog.

How can I track scope changes and unplanned work on my Scrum Board?

The scope change information will appear under the burndown insight when you add, remove or modify issues after the sprint has started. Navigate to the Insights panel to view this.

Hover over the sprint scope changes to reveal a tooltip with the most recent scope changes. You can also select these data points to see a list of affected work items in a separate tab.

Important: If the burndown Insight is not showing, check to see if:

• You’re using story points or issue count as the estimation method for your board. The burndown insight doesn’t support the Original Estimate field and custom estimates.

• Issues included estimations before your sprint started when using story points. The burndown insight won’t show during the sprint if no issues were estimated when the sprint started.

Where can I find Board Insights?

Select the Insights button in the top right corner of your active sprint board to view insights.

All teams using a scrum template in either Team-managed or Company-managed projects (formerly known as Next-gen and Classic projects) have a range of insights available to them:

• Sprint progress insight
  Teams will be able to see if they’re on track to meet their sprint goals at a glance by using this insight. Breaking down your team’s sprint commitment by status and grouping it as To do, In progress, or Done.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Burndown insight
  The burndown insight helps teams predict how likely they will complete all the work in their sprint. Visualizing completed work (burned down) against total work remaining in your current sprint and highlighting any changes made to the sprint’s scope after it has started.
  
  

• Issues for attention insight
  This insight surfaces flagged and blocked issues in a team’s sprint, helping teams have a quick overview of which issues are high priority or need follow-up.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Epic progress breakdown insight
  This insight helps teams understand how their sprint progress contributes to bigger goals.
  
  
  
  

Note: If you don’t see the Insights button on your board, check to see if you have started your sprint.

We are eager to hear your feedback!

We can’t wait to hear what you think - please share your feedback with us by selecting the Give feedback button in the Insights panel or leaving any suggestions or comments below. Your feedback helps us to improve Insights and shape our future roadmap.

[Ajay _view26_]

@Natalija Fuksmane  .. thanks for the great article on the Insight Panel.

In our use-case we have multiple projects added to the board.  When I checked the Insights feature I get the below error "Something’s blocking your insights.It might be because this board isn’t associated with a specific project..."

Does it mean Insights will work only with a Board having only 1 Project?

[Natalija Fuksmane]

Hi @Ajay _view26_ 
Thank you kindly for your feedback!

At the moment, Insights don't support the Boards where there is an association with multiple projects or no association with the project at all.

That being said, I've made a note of your use case and the fact that you have multiple projects added to the Board so that we can investigate further and improve the experience for you. 

Thank you,

Natalia

[Ajay _view26_]

@Natalija Fuksmane  Thanks for the reply.. We use a single Board for our daily standup, and have multiple ongoing projects .. So a way for insights to work with multiple projects would be ideally great for us!

[Natalija Fuksmane]

This is really interesting - thank you again for sharing @Ajay _view26_ !

I would love to discuss your use case in more detail - if you are interested in chatting with me about this, please feel free to grab the time that suits you best in my calendar:

https://calendly.com/nfuksmane/60-minute-meeting

Thank you!

[Deleted user]

1. 1. Burnup...it's the same thing I told the previous product manager (I can't remember her name precisely, but for some reason "Erin" comes to mind). The burndown is deprecated from more trainers (of any repute) don't use this, and is actually considered an anti-pattern.
2. While the visualization for scope ADDED, REMOVED, MODIFIED may be useful in the insights, being able to REPORT on it oneself at-will  from JQL is what would be more useful. Having to use the insights view to get at this while somewhat useful, is not as flexible as most folks who've commented it (IMO) might desire it.
3. As I've previous detailed to the last PM I spoke to. It would really also be helpful to have "things needing attention" as a "Quick Filter" on the board that you could select immediately. I've actually had to resort to implementing a Quick Filter for just such a purpose.
   1. Also "Needing attention" can be interpreted many different ways.
      1. Flagged is set
      2. Something hasn't been updated in X days.
      3. Things that haven't been transitioned from their previous stage in the workflow in X days.
      4. there are probably more examples.

There....I've just saved us some time.

[Sonu Bhatia]

Is there a way to get the following info for completed sprints?
• Issues removed from sprint after the sprint start date
• Issues modified while running a sprint

[Srinivaas]

It is showing incorrect data.

for me it is showing 57 issues and 19 SP but when after clicking the link it is displaying only 50 issues and 13 SP. O

[Charlie Giardino]

Similar to Ajay's ask, in a Scaled Agile environment, insights at an essential SAFe level to address all teams on the ART would be very beneficial. Additionally, a method to add a gadget to a program level dashboard to track unplanned work across all teams would be a huge benefit

[Srinivaas]

This insights is not giving the right information. Calculations are wrong.

[Natalija Fuksmane]

Hey @Srinivaas 

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. I would love to understand better your use case and which insight is providing you with inaccurate information.

If you are interested in chatting with me about this, please feel free to grab the time that suits you best in my calendar:

https://calendly.com/nfuksmane/60-minute-meeting

Thank you in advance,

Natalia

[Natalija Fuksmane]

Hey @Sonu Bhatia 

Thank you for taking time to share your feedback and follow up questions.

Insights are not currently providing this information for historical sprints. I would love to understand how you are currently using this information. 

If you are interested in chatting with me about this, please feel free to grab the time that suits you best in my calendar:

https://calendly.com/nfuksmane/60-minute-meeting

Thank you in advance,

Natalia

[Natalija Fuksmane]

Hey @Charlie Giardino 

Thank you kindly for taking the time to provide feedback to us. 

I would love to understand how you are gathering insights at appropriate level (or rolling up to appropriate level) today.

If you are interested in chatting with me about this, please feel free to grab the time that suits you best in my calendar:

https://calendly.com/nfuksmane/60-minute-meeting

Thank you in advance,

Natalia

[mo barger]

Will Insights ever be available for on-prem installations?

[Jana Kyselová]

Unfortunately we cannot use Burndown as it does not support Time Estimation. Why? We are getting information " We don’t currently support your estimation setting. This insight only supports story points, or issue count.  " If the Jira allows such estimation setting, why not Insight?