4 Easy Steps to Creating a Dashboard in Jira

Undoubtedly, Jira has always held the crown as the best Agile/Scrum tool ever created. Its unparalleled quality lies in keeping everything simple, allowing the scrum team complete control to configure and modify what suits them best. This simplicity extends to its Dashboards, much like the Kanban and Scrum boards provided.

Here, we’ll delve into creating a Dashboard in Jira, focusing on the Sprint Dashboard — an indispensable tool for any team.

Let’s Build a Dashboard Together

Step 1: Develop a Wireframe

Creating a wireframe is as crucial as the final dashboard product. Through this process, we can design the dashboard’s look and feel, starting from a pen-and-paper approach, allowing for continuous modifications until we’re closer to our expectations. Repeat this step as necessary until finding the dashboard(s) that perfectly suit your team’s needs.

Step 2: Creating Filters

Creating a filter in Jira is akin to low-level coding in SQL (Structured Query Language). Jira Query Language (JQL) shares similar constructs, making it relatively easy to learn and understand. You don’t need to be an expert in various JQL constructs to create Dashboards, as numerous online resources can assist with JQL codes.

For instance, consider this simple JQL code:

Project = “ProjectName” AND Sprint in openSprints()

This filter fetches information from a specific project/scrum board within Jira, ensuring that only information from the currently open Sprint is included. Consequently, no backlog or previous sprint information will be incorporated into any charts or summary reports.

Step 3: Add Gadgets

Jira offers a plethora of gadgets; here are a few we commonly use:

• Days Remaining in the Sprint Gadget: Displays the remaining days in a sprint, providing context to the overall information. This really for aesthetics but it can be for tie other data points together know how much Dev hours/days remain really put things into context.
• Sprint Health Gadget: Provides a visual snapshot of a sprint’s health, summarizing time elapsed, work completed, and any scope changes during the sprint. This indeed a powerful gadget that truly brings the dashboard together as a focal point to deep dive into the other areas when investigating whats going on for instance having a 12% scope change will then have us looking into what were the User stories or task added to the sprint and what is the current status of it.
• Sprint Burndown Gadget: Tracks remaining work based on the expected completion trend through a burndown chart. This chart can be found in numerous parts of Jira but fitting into the Dashboard allow for a full insight of information within a single view point. Most things can be know about a sprint just from the burndown chart.
• Two-Dimension Filter: Displays information on an x & y axis to compare two elements, such as tickets and status count. This allows tying data points that would necessary be easily understood within a simple table. A few examples are:

Developer Vs Ticket status -> this will show us where each ticketed owned by a dev is within the work funnel; for instance Tom (SD) — To do (4) In progress (1) In Review (3) QA (1) Done (4)

Priority vs Status

Ticket Type vs Story points

Developer vs Story points

Step 4: Tell a Story

Ultimately, creating a Dashboard isn’t about tracking teams or pressuring them for results. Its value lies in allowing the team to measure their own performance and find avenues for improvement — an integral part of Agile’s infinite feedback approach. Remember, no two teams are identical, so performance is a team-based metric rather than a company-wide expectation.

The Story can be in the form of how to present the team Sprint progress to your direct manager and/or client. To reinforce the transparency within the progress being made without explaining the relevance of an individual ticket. Also, anyone outside the team gets this level of power must also be willing to accept that its a view only, leave your comments at the door but in reality they never do so as much as the Dashboard is design to make our work easier it doesn't in the end but still it has it place in the over grand scheme of things.

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