Comparison of Work Done and Elapsed Time

Comparison between % work done and % elapsed time may be an indicator of a potential delay. But before making a fast conclusion make sure that the team keeps Jira up-to-date with real work progress. If someone forgot to resolve an issue then data in Jira will indicate a delay but in real life, there would be none.

Example: What is the status of “Release 3.0“ as of today 29/SEP?

Check the annual TimeLine

Open the Release TimeLine and compare the (1.) % work done with (2.) % elapsed time directly on the TimeLine. Visually we can see that the work done is less than elapsed time (1.) < (2.) - this is the first indication of potential delay.

Open

Click & expand to get details

By expanding the “Release 3.0“ you can see that until today (29/SEP) it took (2.) 56 % of overall time to do (1.) 40% of the work. Now we need to check whether the team updates status on their Jira issues regularly. You can easily check this in the filter “No Activity“ - the number 4 indicates that there are 4 issues that have not been updated in the last 7 days. If you click on the filter name then the table below will show only those 4 issues. “No activity” means no status change, comment nor logged hours. In this case, my next step as a manager would be to talk to the assignees/team leads and see what the situation is.

Open

Comparison of Work Done, Elapsed Time and Effort

Teams that log work and, more importantly, keep up-to-date the remaining time needed to complete issues (or RTE) can analyze the effort needed to complete Releases/Epics.

Example: What is the current status of “Release for customization 1.0“ as of today 29/SEP?

By expanding the “Release for customization 1.0“ you can see that until today (29/SEP) it took (2.) 86% of overall time to do (1.) 18% of the work. The work required 8 Man Hours, which is 18% of all Man Hours currently estimated. So in this case, the work is not advancing but also the effort is not going up. No one logs time on issues. This is a signal that the team is not actively working on this Release, that is why there is no progress.

(4.) The warning sign indicates that the team increased the remaining time needed by 8 Man Hours.