URSACORP Apps / Issue Aging Chart

Issue Aging Chart

A Jira dashboard gadget that plots every in-progress issue by how long it has been in progress, against the cycle times your own project recorded over the last 90 days.

How it works

Work in progress rarely announces that it is stuck. It just sits there while the board looks busy. This gadget puts every open in-progress issue on one plot.

• Horizontal position is the status the issue is currently sitting in.
• Vertical position is how many days it has been in progress, computed from the issue's own changelog rather than from its creation date.
• Four dashed guide lines cross the chart at the 50th, 70th, 85th and 95th percentiles of the cycle times your project actually recorded over the last 90 days.

That last part is what makes the chart worth reading. A dot above the 85th percentile line is not "old" by some vendor's definition. It is older than 85% of the work this team has actually finished recently.

When the gadget loads it asks Jira for the in-progress issues in the chosen project, for the issues that project completed in the last 90 days, and for the status changelogs of both sets. It computes the percentiles in your browser. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere.

An honest limit

A project that has not finished at least five issues in the last 90 days has no baseline worth ranking against. In that case the gadget says so plainly and leaves every dot neutral, rather than colouring ordinary work red. If you see that message, it is working correctly.

Key features

• One dot per in-progress issue, positioned by status and by days in progress.
• Percentile guide lines computed from your project's own recent cycle times, not from a fixed threshold.
• Click any dot to open that issue in Jira.
• Refreshes on the dashboard's own refresh control.
• States the absence of a baseline instead of inventing one.
• Reads your data and stores nothing. No external services, no analytics.

Setup

1. Install the app from the Marketplace. This needs Jira administrator rights.
2. In Jira go to Dashboards and open the dashboard you want, or create a new one.
3. Choose Edit, then Add gadget.
4. Find Issue Aging Chart in the gadget list and choose Add gadget.
5. The gadget opens in its configuration view. Type part of a project name or key into the search box, pick the project from the results, and choose Save.

There is nothing else to configure. The gadget stores the project you picked and reads everything else from Jira each time it loads.

Verifying that it works

What you need on the site first

The chart needs real data to show anything meaningful. On a fresh site, prepare one project with:

• At least a few issues currently in a status whose category is In Progress, moved there at different times so they differ in age.
• At least five issues moved to a Done status within the last 90 days. This is what the percentile lines are computed from. With fewer than five, the gadget will correctly report that there is no baseline.

Steps

1. Add the gadget to a dashboard and point it at that project, as described under Setup.
2. Check the dots. Count the dots on the chart. There should be exactly one per in-progress issue in the project. Compare against an issue search using project = YOURKEY AND statusCategory = "In Progress".
3. Check a position. Pick one dot and note the number of days it shows. Open that issue's History tab and confirm the date it first entered an in-progress status. The days on the chart should match the elapsed time since then.
4. Check the guide lines. Four dashed lines should be drawn across the chart, labelled with the 50th, 70th, 85th and 95th percentiles.
5. Check the click-through. Click any dot. Jira should navigate to that issue.
6. Check the no-baseline path. Point the gadget at a project with fewer than five issues completed in the last 90 days, for example a brand new project. The gadget should state that there is not enough completed work to rank against, draw no guide lines, and leave the dots neutral. This is the intended behaviour.
7. Check the refresh. Move an issue into or out of an in-progress status, then refresh the gadget. The chart should follow.

Permissions

The app requests a single read-only permission, read:jira-work, and no write permission of any kind. It is used to read the issues that are currently in progress, their changelogs, the project the gadget is pointed at, and status metadata so that statuses can be mapped to their categories.

Every request goes through the Forge bridge as the signed-in viewer, so a user only ever sees issues they could already open in Jira themselves. The gadget writes nothing back to Jira.

Data handling

No data leaves your Atlassian site. The manifest declares no external permissions, and the source contains no outbound network call, so the app is eligible for Atlassian's Runs on Atlassian programme. The app stores nothing beyond the gadget's own configuration, which is the project you selected. Full detail is in the privacy policy.

Support

ursacorp.llc@gmail.com