Visualize time in status on Jira dashboards with Custom Charts

One of the best ways of assessing the productivity of your team and investigating potential blockers is by looking at how long they’re spending on their work. Specifically, how long their Jira issues are spending in a particular status. With Custom Charts for Jira and Confluence, users can visualize time in status on Jira dashboards and Confluence pages, and get an at-a-glance picture of time spent per epic, sprint, assignee, and more.

Questions you can answer with time in status Jira reports

When you make time in status reports with Custom Charts on Jira dashboards or Confluence pages, you can address the following questions.

How long are issues spending in “to do”?

If your issues are spending longer than they should in the “to do” status, this may suggest that there is a problem getting things started. Could there be a capacity problem? Is the team waiting on information? Click on the “to do” segment and you’ll see the issues in question, allowing you to investigate further why some of them are taking a while to start.

How long are issues spending “in progress” or “in review”?

Issues spending ages in the “in progress” status could suggest a blocker that is preventing them from being completed, e.g. absent assignees or dependencies on other teams. If issues are “in review” for a long time, it could indicate that approval processes are not being followed in a timely manner.

How do our sprints compare in time spent?

You can use Custom Charts to look at how time in status compares across your sprints. Was this sprint more complicated? Did that sprint have more issues? Were there resource gaps during that sprint?

How long are different epics taking to complete?

You can also track time in status on epics, letting you see whether some epics are taking too long to complete or get started. What’s causing the delay on this epic versus that epic?

Does this assignee have too much work?

Time in status lets you investigate and compare time spent on work per assignee. If one assignee has a long list of issues still in “to do”, you can ask the question: are they struggling to get started? Have they been away? Equally, if another assignee has loads of items “in progress”, you can ask: are they juggling too much? Do they need help?

Does actual time spent match our estimates?

Many teams will estimate how long their issues are going to take to complete per sprint. By displaying the actual time issues are taking on your charts, you can see whether your estimates were accurate. If not, why not?

2 examples of time in status charts

This bar chart shows the average time spent on issues in the current sprint and reveals that the team does not have any major bottlenecks. However, issues are spending the largest amount of time in the “In Review” status, which is something the manager or Scrum Master ought to keep an eye on.

This bar chart shows the time in status of a software development team working in Kanban. The fact that they work in Kanban, not in sprints, is the reason why things stay so long in “To Do”. This chart reveals that the testing process for new software is actually running pretty smoothly, with tickets moving along quickly. However, they’re tending to stay in “Waiting for Deploy” much longer, which suggests that there could be some bottlenecks in the release process.

How does time in status work in Custom Charts?

Tracking time in status in Custom Charts for Jira and Confluence couldn’t be easier. There are two ways of doing it. Simply select the “Status (Time in Status)” field from the Chart By dropdown, then the Calculate dropdowns will auto-update with the “Sum” of “Time in Status”. (You can also calculate the “Average” of “Time in Status” if you prefer.)

Equally, if you want to take the long way round, select “Status” in the Chart By and then “Sum” and “Time in Status” from the Calculate dropdowns.

You can then use our Simple Search gadget to parse the data down and see how long issues are spending in each status per sprint, assignee, epic etc.

For more details about how to set up and report on time in status on Jira dashboards, take a look at our documentation. This page also explains how to change the time unit from hours to days, weeks, months etc.

Time in status functionality currently works with 1D charts only. However, the functionality will be released for 2D charts soon, allowing you to compare time in status per sprint or assignee on the same chart.