JIRA Reports and Analytics
Tracking progress is one of the most important parts of any project. JIRA provides built-in reports and analytics that help teams understand how work is moving, where delays are happening, and whether the team is on track to meet deadlines. These reports pull data directly from issues, sprints, and workflows — so there is no need to maintain separate spreadsheets.
This topic covers every major report available in JIRA, when to use each one, and how to read the data correctly.
What Are JIRA Reports?
A JIRA report is an automatic visual summary of project data. JIRA generates these reports based on the issues, sprints, and workflow transitions already present in the project. Reports update in real time as the team logs work, closes issues, or moves tasks across the board.
Reports serve three main purposes:
- Show the current health of a sprint or project
- Identify bottlenecks and blockers before they become critical
- Help managers and stakeholders make data-driven decisions
Where to Find Reports in JIRA
Reports are available inside each project. Follow these steps to open the reports section:
- Open any JIRA project from the left sidebar
- Click Reports from the project menu on the left
- JIRA displays a list of available reports grouped by category
- Click any report name to open it
JIRA organizes reports into four categories: Agile, Issue Analysis, Forecast and Management, and Other. Each category targets a different aspect of project tracking.
Agile Reports
Agile reports are designed specifically for Scrum and Kanban teams. These are the most commonly used reports in software development projects.
Burndown Chart
The Burndown Chart shows how much work remains in a sprint compared to how much time is left. The horizontal axis represents days in the sprint, and the vertical axis represents story points or issue count.
The chart draws two lines:
- Guideline (grey line): The ideal pace at which the team should complete work if they work at a perfectly steady speed every day
- Actual (red/blue line): The real pace at which the team is completing work
Reading the Burndown Chart
Sprint: 2 weeks | Total: 40 story points Day 1 |████████████████████████████████████████| 40 pts remaining Day 3 |████████████████████████████████ | 32 pts remaining Day 5 |████████████████████████ | 24 pts remaining ← on track Day 7 |████████████████████████████████ | 32 pts remaining ← scope added Day 10 |████████████████ | 16 pts remaining Day 14 | | 0 pts remaining ← sprint complete
When the actual line stays below the guideline, the team is ahead of schedule. When it goes above, the team is falling behind. A sudden jump upward usually means new issues were added mid-sprint.
Sprint Report
The Sprint Report gives a complete summary of a finished or active sprint. It lists every issue that was planned, completed, removed, or left incomplete at the end of the sprint.
Sprint Report Structure
| Section | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Completed Issues | Issues moved to "Done" before sprint ended |
| Issues Not Completed | Issues still open when the sprint closed |
| Issues Removed | Issues that were deleted or removed mid-sprint |
| Velocity | Total story points completed in this sprint |
The Sprint Report is especially useful during Sprint Retrospectives. Teams use it to understand what they committed to versus what they actually delivered.
Velocity Chart
The Velocity Chart compares how many story points the team completed across multiple sprints. It helps teams predict how much work they can realistically take on in future sprints.
Sprint | Committed | Completed
------------|-----------|----------
Sprint 1 | 30 | 22
Sprint 2 | 25 | 24
Sprint 3 | 28 | 27
Sprint 4 | 30 | 30
Sprint 5 | 32 | 29
| |
Average Velocity → 26.4 points per sprint
Each bar in the chart has two colours. The grey portion shows the committed story points. The green portion shows what was actually completed. When both portions are equal, the team delivered exactly what they planned.
Teams use the average velocity to plan the next sprint. If the average is 26 points, committing to 40 points in the next sprint is unrealistic.
Cumulative Flow Diagram
The Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) is the primary report for Kanban teams. It shows how issues flow through each status column over time.
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
Issues │▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ To Do │
│░░░░░░░░░░ In Progress │
│▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ In Review │
│████████████ Done │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
Time →
A healthy CFD shows bands of roughly equal thickness that move forward steadily. When one band (like "In Review") grows very thick, it means work is piling up in that stage and something is blocking progress there.
Epic Report
The Epic Report tracks progress toward completing a specific epic. It shows which stories within the epic are done, in progress, or not yet started.
This report is helpful for product managers who need to communicate feature-level progress to stakeholders. Instead of listing dozens of individual issues, they can show a single chart for the entire epic.
Epic Burndown
The Epic Burndown works like the Sprint Burndown but at the epic level. It shows how many story points within an epic remain across multiple sprints. Teams use it to predict when a large feature will be fully complete.
Release Burndown
The Release Burndown tracks progress toward a software release version (also called a fix version in JIRA). It answers the question: "Will we finish everything planned for version 2.0 by the target date?"
Issue Analysis Reports
Issue Analysis reports focus on the volume and type of issues in a project rather than sprint progress. These reports are useful for quality tracking and workload management.
Created vs. Resolved Chart
This chart compares how many issues were created versus how many were resolved during a selected time period.
Week | Created | Resolved | Net Change -----------|---------|----------|------------ Week 1 | 12 | 8 | +4 Week 2 | 10 | 14 | -4 ← team is catching up Week 3 | 6 | 10 | -4 Week 4 | 9 | 9 | 0 ← balanced
When created exceeds resolved consistently, the backlog is growing. When resolved exceeds created, the team is reducing the backlog. The goal is to keep these numbers balanced or to keep resolved higher than created.
Resolution Time Report
This report shows the average time it takes to resolve issues of a specific type. It helps identify which issue types take the longest to close and whether resolution time is improving over time.
Average Age Report
The Average Age Report shows how old unresolved issues are. Older unresolved issues indicate neglected work or long-standing blockers. Project managers use this report during grooming sessions to prioritise or close stale issues.
Pie Chart
The Pie Chart in JIRA breaks down issues by any field — such as priority, assignee, status, or component. It gives a quick visual overview of how work is distributed across the project.
Forecast and Management Reports
These reports help project managers plan future work based on past team performance.
Version Report
The Version Report forecasts when a release version will be completed based on the team's current velocity. It plots completed and incomplete work over time and projects a likely finish date.
Time Tracking Report
The Time Tracking Report compares the original time estimate for issues against the actual time logged by team members. It is most useful when teams log work hours directly in JIRA using the "Log Work" feature.
Issue | Estimated | Logged | Remaining -------------|-----------|---------|---------- PROJ-101 | 8h | 6h | 2h PROJ-102 | 4h | 7h | 0h ← over estimate PROJ-103 | 12h | 3h | 9h
When logged time consistently exceeds estimates, the team is underestimating. This pattern helps future sprint planning become more accurate.
Key Points
- The Burndown Chart is best for tracking progress within a single sprint
- The Velocity Chart is best for predicting future sprint capacity
- The Cumulative Flow Diagram is the primary report for Kanban teams
- Created vs. Resolved helps monitor whether the backlog is growing or shrinking
- Reports update automatically — no manual data entry is needed
- Use the Sprint Report during retrospectives to review what was planned versus delivered
- Version and Epic reports help stakeholders track progress at a feature or release level