You are ready for this tool!

One thing that many people like to say when they see the kind of metrics that ActionableAgile provides is “we’re not ready for a tool like this” or “we’re not mature enough yet.” I’m here to tell you that you are ready and you are mature enough. In fact, to be ready, the only requirement is that you actually complete work.

Many key actionable metrics need just:

• Start Date of work items and

• End Date of work items.

Seriously, that’s all you need to start! From those two pieces of information, it can calculate the cycle time of the work (duration) and how many items finish in a given time period (throughput). Of course, other information like issue type, time spent in workflow status, etc. can help you segment your reporting, but to begin to get value, you just need to have started and finished some work.

These charts feel like advanced concepts but they are just something different than what you’re used to. You’re even ready for the Monte Carlo charts. What I wouldn’t give to go back and start my first job in my first team knowing how to use all of these charts. I could have saved a lot of unnecessary time coming up with estimates and making forecasts.

Now that we’ve established that you’re ready, the first thing you need to know is where do you start. We’ll be making some UX improvements within the tool in the future to help make that more obvious. But, until then, head to the reports section in any Jira project, click on the ActionableAgile icon, and start diving into these charts:

1. Work Item Age - how old is the work that’s currently in process. This lets you know if anything is getting stale and helps keep urgency around the work even when you don’t use due dates. This is great to use during a daily standup.

2. Cycle Time - how long does it take you to finish work. This helps you see how long it might take you to finish a specific piece of work in the future and if you starting to work faster or slower. This is great to use during retrospectives or planning sessions.

3. Throughput - how many items do we finish in a given period of time. This helps you see how much work you get done and you can see if you are becoming more productive or less productive. This is a key chart to use for planning sessions and is also good to use to spot trends during retrospectives.

Let us know what questions you have while using ActionableAgile. We’re here for you no matter if you’re a long-time customer or a new evaluator.

Try ActionableAgile for Jira - Agile Metrics for free today!