As a Kanban coach I often come across Jira and without fail I find that the implementation doesn't set Start Date for work items in a usable way, nor does it calculate and show Work Item Age. These two, along with Cycle time, are essential for understanding your flow of work. And with Kanban being a strategy to manage and improve the flow of work it would be impossible to make any progress with these essential fields. After implementing my own solution, including paying for Jira Apps, I decided to create a couple for myself and since they have been tested and used, I thought it might be beneficial to make them available to everyone. I hope fellow Kanban practitioners using Jira will find these useful.

Work Item Essentials

Essential Kanban metrics to help improve your Jira workflow