Viewing the Control Chart

A Control Chart can show the cycle time or lead time for your product, version or sprint. The horizontal x-axis in a Control Chart indicates time, and the vertical y-axis indicates the number of days issues have spent in those statuses.

A Control Chart helps you identify whether data from the current sprint can be used to determine future performance. The less variance in the cycle time of an issue, the higher the confidence in using the mean (or median) as an indication of future performance.

To view the control chart:

Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.
Click Report, then select Control Chart from the drop-down at left. The Control Chart for your current sprint will be displayed (see screenshot below).
- Hover over the graph at any point to display actual values of the moving average.
- By default the chart will select all column(s) other than the first and last (usually the 'To Do' and 'Done' columns). Since the chart shows the average amount of time each issue spent in each of these columns this means that the default chart shows cycle time. To re-draw the chart to show lead time use Refine (as below) and select all columns other than the last
- To re-draw the chart excluding a column(s) or swimlane(s), or to apply a quick filter, click Refine (see below for more details).
- To select a different timeframe (past week/past month/past 3 months/past 6 months/all time/custom), click the date range at the top of the chart (see below for more details).
- To include Non-Working Days in your Cycle Time calculations, select the check-box below the chart.

Note that the Control Chart is board-specific, that is, it will only include issues which match your board's Filter.

Issues which are currently in statuses that are not mapped to one of the columns of the board will not be included in the Control Chart (even if those issues were in one of the mapped statuses earlier).

On this page:

Related pages:

Configuring Working Days

Screenshot: Control Chart

Refining the Control Chart

Columns

Click Refine at the top right of the chart to select which column(s) to include.

The control chart includes all issues that spent time in any of the selected columns and are no longer in any of the selected columns. Therefore, selecting the To Do and In Progress columns will normally show you the cumulative time from issue creation to completion (as you will only see issues that spent time in these columns and are not located there anymore — that is, you will see all issues that are currently Done).

If you select only the In Progress column you will see the time an issue has spent in development. That is, you will only see issues that passed through In Progress but are now either located in To Do or Done. Issues that moved directly from To Do to Done won't show up; neither will issues that are still In Progress.

If you only select the last column (typically called 'Done'), you will only see issues that moved in and out of the Done column — which in most cases is not very useful. Your completed issues won't show up, as they are still located in the Done column. Selecting the last column will therefore often not make much sense, unless perhaps your rapid board maps to only part of your workflow.

Swimlanes

Click Refine at the top right of the chart to select which swimlane(s) to include.

Quick Filters

Click Refine at the top right of the chart to select which Quick Filter(s) to apply.

Date range

Click the date range at the top of the chart to select the timeframe.

Each issue is displayed at the last time it moved out of any of the selected columns, as the control chart only shows a single data point for each issue. The date range selector simply filters out issues that don't match that date.

Even though an issue might have been updated during a selected time range, it won't show up in the control chart unless it has been "completed" during that time.

So, for example, if you have an issue that moved on day 1 from To Do to In Progress, then on day 2 from In Progress to To Do, then on day 3 from To Do to In Progress and then on day 4 from In Progress to Done, and you select the To Do and In Progress columns on your control chart, the issue will show up as a dot on day 4, and on day 4 only.

If you now choose a date range that only covers day 2 and day 3, the example issue won't show up even though it moved through your selected columns during that time.

Child pages