Kanban Teams - Best Jira Apps (Free and/or Subscription Cost)

[Lee Street]

Can you please tell me what you recommend as the best apps for Kanban teams?

Free or subscription costs?

Im looking to measure flow and optimize efficiencies with Kanban teams

[Jack Brickey]

There are a lot of great apps out there. However I never consider adding an app until I have a problem that I need to get solved that simply is unsolvable out of the box. it used to be that I would recommend an automation Or scripting app, however now that A4J is built in there generally not a need in my case. are you currently experiencing a limitation? If not I strongly encourage you just to use the tool for several months or more and then once you have a problem investigate the marketplace  and query  the community.

[Lee Street]

Thanks Jack.  Appreciate your speeding response.

Problem: Kanban Teams seem to have free limited reporting capabilities in Jira which are not simple and straightforward. The control chart is not great.

Having been the Rally Enterprise Admin lead, Rally provided basic reporting lead time, cycle time, throughput, time in process for Kanban Teams.

I'm really trying to get these basic measurements for continuous flow teams

[Jack Brickey]

Got it! Thanks for sharing more details. To be honest I haven’t needed any reporting capabilities beyond what is in place today. Are use a combination of built-in reports and creating dashboards to track how the team is performing.

Hopefully others will pass by here that have tried additional reporting add-ons and chime in. Having said that, have you gone to the marketplace and reviewed any of the several apps for reporting? I certainly would suggest trialing some of the popular ones and see how they map to what you previously used in Rally.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Lee Street 

Yes, and...to what Jack suggests:

• I recommend reading this documentation page for the Jira interpretation of a control chart report.  It has a lot of useful info, but it is a bit tricky to get it set up to show what you want: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/view-and-understand-the-control-chart/
• One gap I find for built-in reporting is roll-up over time and charting.  If you go the route of considering addons from the marketplace I strongly suggest this approach:
  • pause to consider what you want to measure and why (e.g. temporary diagnostic measures or long-term metrics)
  • either hand-calculate with exports or use automation rules to calculate these to confirm that is what you want to measure
  • with data in hand for your wants/needs, investigate the marketplace and ask vendors specific questions about what they can/cannot do.  some seem reluctant to explain what they are actually measuring.  (spoiler: measuring cycle time with outliers removed isn't proprietary info  ;^)

Best regards,

Bill

[Mehmet A _Bloompeak_]

Hi @Lee Street ,

I recommend Status Time app developed by our team. It provides reports on how much time passed in each status as well as status entry dates and status transition count.

Once you enter your working calendar into the app, it takes your working schedule into account too. That is, "In Progress" time of an issue opened on Friday at 5 PM and closed on Monday at 9 AM, will be a few hours rather than 3 days. It has various other reports like assignee time, status entry dates, average/sum reports by any field(eg. average in progress time by project, average cycle time by issue creation month). And all these are available as gadgets on the dashboard too.

Here is the online demo link, you can see it in action and try.

If you are looking for a free solution, you can try the limited version Status Time Free. Hope it helps.

[Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_]

Hi @Lee Street 

Our team produces a list of add-ons that helps managers monitor workflow progress. You can check out these apps at the Atlassian marketplace For Jira Cloud users:

Time in Status for Jira Cloud – a top-rated time monitoring app that measures the time spent in a specific status. It can help you to get a helicopter view of your team delivery.

Issue History – shows a history of all the changes that had been made in the selected list of issues.

Time Between Statuses – calculates status to status time. It can be useful to you for calculating the Cycle and Lead Time of your Jira issues, etc.

Hope some of them will be helpful for you.

[Emre Toptancı _OBSS_]

Hello @Lee Street

I can recommend our tool Time in Status. You can use it to identify bottlenecks in your process and also see the trend over time. 

Time in Status mainly allows you to see how much time each issue spent on each status or assigned to each assignee. You can combine statuses in any way into consolidated columns to see metrics like Lead Time, Cycle Time, Resolution Time, or Ticket Age. You can calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by issue fields you select. (For example see the monthly average Lead Time per user, or weekly average Cycle Time per component, etc.). This time-based grouping allows you to see the trend over time.

It is better than Jira's Control Chart because TiS gives you detailed information and far better control over report parameters.

Time in Status can display its reports and charts in its own reporting page, in dashboard gadgets, and in a tab on issue view screens.

    

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.

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. Sort and Filter according to report values.
• 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

It is available for Jira Server, Cloud, and Data Center.

EmreT