Is there an SLA equivalent in software projects?

[Ben Weisman]

I'm trying to better understand our lead and cycle times for our software team.

On average, how long do things take to start development on? How long does it take to complete them once development has started? Etc Etc

Is there a way to set up some sort of SLA structure on software projects?

[Olha Onofriichuk_SaaSJet]

Hi, @Ben Weisman 

I can give you a piece of advice based on my own experience. Our development and support teams also use SLAs (SLA Time and Report for Jira add-on), as it helps them to monitor tasks fulfillments, control time of tasks completions and use some automated actions (like sending notifications to the team if the task isn't completed on time, changing the assignee of the task, its status or priority when needed). So, actually, it is possible to use SLA plugins for software development teams.

I'll show you how we do this on Jira Software, but this add-on also works with Jira Service Management, Jira Core, Jira Software.

So, let me show you how it works:

1) You can set time when the task should move from one stage to another. For example, if you need the task to move from the stage"In progress" to the stage "To release" or "Ready for QA", you by August 15, but you'd also like to receive a few notifications (reminders) about the task, you can set up sending notifications with the help of SLA:
-Just add necessary custom fields (time stamps and labels),
-set a due date,

-open SLA Time and Report for Jira and add a new SLA Configurations with the Negotiated date SLA goal type,
-choose the conditions you need,
-set up sending notification to one person or a group of users (for example, send one notification on August 10 (the date indicated in the custom field) and the second notifications at 9 a.m. on the due date):

 

2) If you want the task to change its priority after 10 hours after being in "In progress status, just choose a Time limit based SLA goal type, and set the amount of hours/minutes in the SLA time goal settings after which you'd like your task to get another priority:

Or choose other options: 

And then you can monitor how much time has left, how many % of the planned time has already passed, etc.

And if you need any help with settings or want to explore the functionality of the add-on more, let me know! SLA Time and Report for Jira add-on is created by my SaaSJet team, so we will be glad to help you with setting it up.

Regards,
Olha

[Emre Toptancı _OBSS_]

Hello @Ben Weisman ,

There is no SLA structure for software projects but it is perfectly possible to measure status times or the time from one status to another. The data you need is available in each issue's history but Jira does not give this as a ready-to-use report. You will need to use a marketplace app for this.

If you are OK with using a marketplace app for this, our team at OBSS built Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira for this exact need. It is available for Jira Server, Cloud, and Data Center.  

Time in Status mainly allows you to see how much time each issue spent on each status and on each assignee.

       

The app has Consolidated Columns feature. This feature allows you to combine the duration for multiple statuses into a single column and exclude unwanted ones. It is the most flexible way to get any measurement you might want. Measurements like Issue Age, Cycle Time, Lead Time, Resolution Time etc.

Time in Status also has Duration Between Statuses report type which shows the duration from issue creation to a specific status or the duration between two specific statuses.

  

For all numeric report types, you can calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by the issue fields you select. For example total in-progress time per customer (organization) or average resolution time per sprint, week, month, issuetype, request type, etc. The ability to group by parts of dates (year, month, week, day, hour) or sprints is particularly useful here since it allows you to compare different time periods or see the trend.

The app calculates its reports using already existing Jira issue histories so when you install the app, you don't need to add anything to your issue workflows and you can get reports on your past issues as well. It supports both Company Managed and Team Managed projects.

Time in Status reports can be accessed through its own reporting page, dashboard gadgets, and issue view screen tabs. All these options can provide both calculated data tables and charts.

And the app has a REST API so you can get the reports from Jira UI or via REST.

  

Using Time in Status you can:

• See how much time each issue spent on each status, assignee, user group and also see dates of status transitions.
• Calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by issue fields you select. (For example, see average InProgress time per project and per issue type.)
• Export your data as XLS, XLSX, or CSV.
• Access data via REST API. (for integrations)
• Visualize data with various chart types.
• See Time in Status reports on Jira Dashboard gadgets

Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira

EmreT

[Alessandro Lombardo]

I think no, you can try with a custom field datetime picker that you consider like a due date and a scripted field that calculate the difference from created date and the date of the first comment or between the created date and resolution date

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You could probably put something together, but generally software projects don't have SLAs because that's just not how things get developed.  Jira Software is set up mostly for Scrum and Kanban - more Agile than reactive .

Scrum is about timeboxing, which allows you some planning (and that's easy to extend as you grow), Kanban tends to report on throughput, so it might be the better option for you.  You certainly get a control report that shows cycles times.

[Ben Weisman]

We're using Kanban. Can you tell me more about the control report?