Monitor your current work in progress. Compare the state of your process in the past. Observe your WIP consistency.
The Aging Chart for Jira helps you track your current issues in progress. It uses the same visual format as your board in Jira, with each column representing a status in your workflow. With the Aging Chart for Jira, you can immediately see how much time an issue has already spent in progress.
With the Aging Chart for Jira, you can identify the statuses of your workflow that are slowing your delivery times. A large cluster of dots denotes that there is too much work in progress stuck in one state.
On the Aging Chart, you will be able to see the number of current issues in progress available in each status on your board in Jira.
Ensure the number of work items doesn’t exceed your WIP limit for each process state. Respecting your WIP limits is an essential part of achieving both faster delivery times and increased productivity.
By clicking on each dot, you can see a detailed breakdown of your work items in progress like the type of issue and a direct link to the card in Jira. You can also analyze the time the issue has already spent in each process state.
Issues with the same status and with the same WIP age will be grouped together. Click on the dot to expand the list and assess them individually.
The Aging Chart for Jira allows you to change your basis date to evaluate how your work progressed in the past. Go back to any date to see how your issues were aging back then.
Use this feature during your retrospectives to evaluate bottlenecks in your system and opportunities for improvement.
The percentile lines on your Aging Chart represent your past performance. They illustrate the cycle times that were needed to complete your previous work.
So long as your tasks don’t cross the percentiles you use to define your service level agreements, your work will be delivered on time. For example, if you’ve committed to the 85th percentile, if your work item moves to the orange zone crossing the 70th percentile, don’t sacrifice the quality of your work. Instead of cutting from the scope or rushing the implementation to be able to deliver it on time, keep your commitment by expedite your work.
The colored health zones represent a timeline of how your issues have advanced in the past across each of your process states. For example, the green zone encompasses the times that 50% of your previous issues have spent in each state.
By observing the way your current work is moving through the zones, you are more likely to meet your commitments. The higher the dots, the greater the chance of a delay. To minimize the risk, take a closer look at the issues that move to the yellow zone. These issues have already spent more time in your process than half of your completed issues.
The WIP widget displays the number of issues in progress on a selected date, alongside how your WIP trends have changed over time. Hover over the line chart to monitor the number of issues in progress at each date during the selected period.
Maintaining a stable system all boils down to two main factors - your work in progress and your average age of work in progress. Stable systems are established by keeping these two metrics consistent. A more stable delivery workflow translates to a more predictable system.
The ‘Average Age of WIP’ widget shows the average age of all your work items in progress for the selected date. It also displays how your WIP age trends have built over time. If the average age of your WIP stays roughly equal on a daily basis, then its trend line will be linear; neither increasing nor decreasing over time. This means that you’re maintaining a stable system.
The average age of WIP and cycle time are essentially the same metric, only while cycle time is measured against completed tasks, the age of a task is a measure concerning tasks that are still in progress.