Powerful reporting with JIRA flow companion

I got an assignment to look into some Jira data to get the as is situation for the organisation I was working for. It was the start of an attempt to use real data from our development to plan and follow up on our development work. It was nothing spectacular we wanted to achieve just basic stuff like Throughput, WIP, Cycle time but no. Jira would not let you get that information easily.

At first I was amazed at how bad support there was for reports like this in such a widely used enterprise tool. Reports don´t seem to be something Atlassian or its users cares to much about.

In order to be able to do analyses easily and to be able to get others to start using the data in their daily work I built a tool to make it accessible. The tool is based on the API that populates the Cumulative flow diagram in Jira so basically you can get the data in Jira sliced any way you can do with boards and quick filters. The tool is a Chrome extension so nothing needs to be installed on the Jira instance.

I have tried the tool on three different versions of on premise Jira so it should work most places. (if it does not contact me and ill try to fix it).

Jira flow companion can be used on all levels of the organisation and all the examples below are on a whole organisation level but as you can slice the data any way you can filter Jira issues only imagination limits its use. I have used the tool to analyse Org, Portfolios, Projects and Teams this way.

First thing you need is a Jira kanban board showing the issues you want to analyse, the statuses you are interested in and quick filters for the different ways you want to slice the data.

Even if your Jira board has filtered out all but one card type the other card types is not removed from the CFD API unless you have a quick filter to filter them out ones more. Personally I do not want to see issues that has been closed with resolutions other than Done so my filters look lik this .

fixed is a local custom version of done we use.

Then you need to use chrome as your browser and install the chrome extension Jira flow Companion from Chrome store.

On your board close to the board name you will find the button with caption Analyse flow

pressing that button will trigger the chrome extension and you will be presented with a CFD with the exact same filters applied that was applied in the CFD report in Jira you triggered it from. If you want to apply other filters you can do so in the settings Tab in the extension.

Cumulative Flow Diagram.

You can choose when you want the CFD to start and you can choose for the done section to start from 0 by that date and you can select individual statuses to see the development over time like this

Focused cfd starts from 0 done when time period starts

Analysing the work in progress over the last couple of months by removing backlog and done states from the graph

Analyse burndown by selecting a certain scope and removing done from the graph

Flow

On the flow tab you can look at how the flow of tickets has been over time.The default is by week for the last year but you can set the time period and the intervall as you wish.

There are 3 reports on this tab

Throughput

Weekly througput for the last year

Inflow

Inflow of stories the by week the last year

Backlog growth (Inflow-Throughput)

Seems like work is flowing in faster thanwe can finish it.

if you want to see what the individual issues in the report are. Just check the Show the report as table and yo will se the tickets below and have links to see them directly in Jira either individually or all for a specific time intervall

Lead Times

On the lead times tab you can analyse lead time for done issues and ticket age for tickets not yet done. You can choose when the report should start and what resolution you want to have

Lead time

When no start status or start status is first status you get leadime

Cycle time

Selecting a start state gives you the cycletimes

Ticket age

How long since tickets was created

Ongoing since

Selecting a start state shows how long since development started for ongoing issues.

As with the flow reports you can see the tickets that make up the reports by checking the show report as table checkbox

Iteration report

On the iteration report tab you can get a list with all the tickets closed within an iteration and and some data. You can go to individual tickets in Jira or see them all in a list in Jira.

Monte carlo simulation

On the Monte carlo tab you can do monte carlo simulations based on our the last n weeks development

Throughput prediction

Throughput + Inflow prediction

When will we be done?

Burn down the whole backlog we have today (stable scope)

Burn down the whole backlog (variable scope)

never. we have a higher inflow than throughput

100 stories at 30% capacity?

2–3 iterations

I hope you feel this is helpful and i appreciate feedback.