Definition

The time from when an issue is first moved to a JIRA status of “In Progress,” “Started” or “In Development” to when it is resolved.

Calculation

Average number of hours it takes for an issue to move from a status of “In Progress,” “Started” or “In Development” to a resolved state in a given time period.

Why it Matters

Like PR Cycle Time, which represents your team’s Time To Market using PR data, Issue Cycle Time allows you to understand how long issues (stories, bugs, tasks, etc.) take from start to completion.

How to use it

Issue Cycle Time can be viewed along with PR Cycle Time as your team’s speedometer. Use it to understand baseline productivity over time, and to check for any changes in the team’s process that caused a positive or negative effect on this metric.

If Issue Cycle Time is high it could mean that your developers have a lot of Work In Progress, that requirements are unclear, or that the QA process is taking too long.

This metric is not diagnostic, so to identify why Issue Cycle Time is high, you’ll want to look at other metrics that make up the software development process, such as Time to Open, Time to Review, Time to Merge, or Review Cycles.