Here are the top 5 time reports you can create with Worklogs – Time Tracking and Reports!
Jira gives us an ability to log time spent on a particular issue directly to it. Thank to this we can fairly accurately see how time is being spent in our organization – thanks to built-in Jira time reports or apps that allow enhanced time-based reports. Whenever looking at these reports, we want to see the number of hours spent in a way that is meaningful to us. However, this can mean different things to different people.
The two most common use cases are either looking at how much time each team member spent or how much time was spent in a project (in other words – how much budget was used). This is all meaningful information but does not tell the whole story of the time being spent. There are times, when a more refined report is required – when we want to get a different type of information. In this article, we share the 5 most popular time-based reports we use in order to better understand how time is being spent in our organization using Worklogs – Time Tracking and Reports.
Time spent by members in projects
We like to see time categorized by users, which is then grouped by projects. This view shows us how are our users distributing their effort – this is a useful report for organizations that have members that split their time among different projects. Thanks to this report, you can see if the users are adhering to their commitments. For example, if someone is burning too much time in that ‘easy’ project, but avoids the more challenging one, this will be visible in this report. Or maybe someone is avoiding that legacy project like the plague? This report will surface this.
Flipping this report can also be useful – we can set projects as the categorization and then group by users. This report, on the other hand, shows how much time each member contributes to a project. You can see who is the workhorse behind a given project and who just contributes a few hours here and there.
Time spent by issue types
One interesting report we often look at is time spent by issue type. This helps us to determine how much time is being spent on fixing bugs vs working on features/enhancements. When too high a percentage of time is being spent on bugs, that’s a warning flag for a project that the quality needs improving.
Time spent by fix version
One grouping often used is looking up time spent by fix version, then grouped by users. This can show how much work each version required and how much time given users contributed to a specific release. This view can help you to find out who was most engaged in shipping that the last version out.
This report can be further extended by adding a secondary by issue grouping. This can precisely show what these release contributions really were – who was fixing bugs, who was working on the new features.
Time spent by users in issues
Sometimes a low-level view of things is required – it’s often enlightening to see how much time each user spent in every one of his issues.
Time spent by epics
Epics are used to represent large pieces of work that are then split into smaller tasks – Jira issues. When dealing with epics, a secondary grouping option often becomes handy. A common grouping drill-down is: project – epic – issue. This shows time spent by projects on the highest level, then by epic in each of the projects, and finally goes down into the nitty-gritty of time spent by each issue. This gives a good overview of where time is going in the organization on multiple levels.
A variation of this report does not go into the issue-level, but rather shows how much time users spend by epics. This can be achieved by changing the secondary grouping option to ‘User’.
Summary
These are only a few time report configurations that we use in order to get a better overview of the time being spent in our organization. All of these can be created with our app, Worklogs – Time Tracking and Reports. The categorization/grouping model gives the flexibility to group the data in a way that is meaningful to the user viewing the report. The settings can be quickly changed and you are free to experiment with the groupings to your heart’s desire.
We hope you create reports that show information that is really meaningful to you and helps you achieve your goals more efficiently. What are your favorite categorizations/groupings? Which configurations do you use most often?
Feel free to share them with us in the comments section!
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You can also always consult our documentation in case of any issues.