How Jira Metrics Can Help and Where They Fall Short

You track work in Jira Software, check burndown charts, and review sprint reports. But does any of this actually improve your team's work?

You’re often stuck with surface-level data that looks useful but doesn’t tell the whole story. Sure, you can see what got done, but why did things take longer than expected? Or where bottlenecks are slowing you down?

If you’re tired of staring at numbers that don’t lead to real improvements, you’re in the right place. Here, we'll break down several Agile metrics in Jira and show you how to turn raw data into actionable insights.

Let's get started!

What Are Jira Metrics?

Jira metrics are data points that help you track team performance and workflow efficiency. They measure everything from sprint progress to issue resolution times. This gives you a clearer picture of how work moves through your software development process.

But numbers alone won’t fix your bottlenecks or improve your delivery speed. You need the right key metrics to make sense of the data and drive meaningful improvements.

Jira ranks as the 11th most popular enterprise tool among top websites. But without the right approach, it’s easy to get lost in reports that don’t lead to real progress.

Key Agile Metrics Available in Jira

Tracking the right Agile metrics in Jira helps you keep work on track and spot slowdowns before they become more significant problems. Here are the key reports Jira provides to help you manage your workflow:

• Sprint burndown chart: This chart shows you how much work remains in a sprint so you can adjust your workload if necessary. If your team keeps missing targets, it will be obvious.
• Epic and release burndown: This tool tracks the progress of larger projects over multiple sprints. It helps you manage long-term work without losing sight of deadlines.
• Velocity chart: This chart provides valuable insights into how much work your team typically completes per sprint or over several sprints. It helps you plan future sprints realistically.
• Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD): This chart highlights bottlenecks in your workflow by showing the flow of tasks across different stages. Do you have a growing backlog? This chart will flag it.
• Control chart: This chart helps you analyze cycle times so you can evaluate how consistently work is completed and whether efficiency is improving.

While these charts can be helpful for Scrum teams in specific scenarios, they focus on task movement rather than overall development process efficiency. You need a broader view beyond Jira’s built-in reports to improve team efficiency.

Axify Alternative: Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Jira’s reports help you focus on sprint tracking, but what if you need a bigger picture? Axify’s Value Stream Mapping offers more than sprint-based charts to show how work moves through your entire software development lifecycle – from coding to deployment.

Instead of just tracking tasks, you get a clear view of where time is spent and where delays slow your team down. Axify’s VSM allows you to:

• Track every step of the process from start to finish, not just within a sprint.
• Identify bottlenecks by pinpointing where work is piling up.
• Use trend indicators to add real-time insights into your workflow.
• Quickly navigate with information bubbles that provide helpful context.
• Sort work items by time spent in each phase to spot inefficiencies.
• Jump directly to the source software with one click to take action.
• Adjust the period observed to analyze short-term and long-term trends.

Defect Metrics in Jira

Defects are inevitable, but how you track and fix them makes all the difference. Jira offers several relevant metrics to help you monitor defect trends and improve code quality over time. Here are the defect metrics in Jira:

• Defect density: Measures how many defects appear per unit of work to help you assess overall stability.
• Defect escape rate: Tracks how many defects make it to production instead of being caught during development—a high rate signals gaps in testing.
• Defect resolution time: Shows how long it takes your engineering team to fix reported issues. The shorter, the better.
• Number of defects: Breaks down defects by stage (during development, after release, and those found by customers or other teams).
• Customer support requests: A spike in reported issues could indicate deeper product quality problems.
• Automated test coverage: Measures what percentage of your code is covered by automated tests and reduces the risk of defects slipping through.

Tracking these defect metrics helps you decide where to focus testing and process improvements. The goal isn’t just fewer bugs; it is faster fixes, better prevention, and higher-quality software.

Axify Alternative: High-Level Bottlenecks & Trends

Jira tracks defects, but Axify helps spot the more prominent issues affecting your development team. Instead of just counting bugs, Axify shows you high-level bottlenecks such as slow code reviews, long deployment times, and rising change failure rates. Thus, you get a complete picture of where work is stalling so you can take action before problems pile up.

Axify’s Daily Digest allows you to focus on aging tasks and prioritize what needs attention most. While Jira provides basic backlog tracking, Axify gives you real-time data to keep work flowing and your team operating at its best without getting lost in spreadsheets and reports.

Can I Report Quality Metrics in Jira?

Jira helps you track quality improvements, but it has limitations. While it allows you to monitor defects, test execution reports, and issue resolution trends, it does not provide insight into software stability.

What’s missing?

Test coverage and deployment risk analysis are key factors in delivering high-quality code. Jira won’t show you if your testing is thorough enough or if deployments introduce risks. Without these insights, you might fix defects but still struggle with unstable releases.

If you want a complete view of project progress, you'll need more than Jira's built-in reports. A broader, data-driven approach gives you the whole picture.

Axify Alternative: DORA Metrics

Jira gives you some quality tracking, but Axify takes it further with DORA metrics to help you measure and improve your software delivery. These four key metrics give you real-time data on speed, stability, and reliability:

• Deployment frequency: Tracks how frequently your team releases code to a production environment. A higher frequency means a more agile, responsive workflow.
• Lead time for changes: Measures how long a code change takes from development to deployment. A shorter lead time means faster delivery.
• Change failure rate: Shows the percentage of deployments that cause issues. Lower rates indicate a more stable pipeline.
• Failed deployment recovery time: Tells you how quickly your team can fix a broken release. The faster, the better for users and business continuity.

DORA metrics give engineering leaders real insights into team performance. They help identify process improvements and track stability.

For example, analyzing CFR and MTTR helps spot failures early and keep code stable. Deployment frequency and change lead time show how smoothly the team delivers. Together, these metrics reveal both code quality and delivery speed, helping teams ship better software faster.

Axify helps keep your team moving efficiently by allowing you to focus on continuous improvement. You must stay Agile and focus on improvement to build more reliable software.

What Metrics Are Used to Estimate Project Progress in Jira?

Tracking project progress in Jira requires more than checking completed tasks. You need the right key performance indicators to determine whether your team is delivering as expected.

These metrics are used to estimate progress for your project in Jira:

• Story points completed vs. planned: Shows whether your team is meeting its sprint goals or falling behind. Consistently missing targets could mean unrealistic planning. 

Side note: We don’t advocate for story points as a definitive measure of productivity. However, for the sake of objectivity, we’re explaining their use in tracking sprint progress, as some teams still rely on them. More on that below.

• Lead time for changes: If a team spends 40 hours across 16 commits, they'll spend an average of 2.5 hours per change.
• Work in progress (WIP): This tracks how many tasks are active simultaneously. Too much WIP can slow progress and overload your team.
• Throughput: Measures completed work over a period of time. For example, if your team delivers 20 user stories weekly, that’s a throughput of 20 stories per week.
• Sprint commitment: High-performing teams hit sprint completion rates of above 80%, showing strong execution and planning.
• Deployment frequency: About 75% of tech leaders use this metric to measure DevOps success.
• Cycle time: When your team completes work faster, your software development process runs more smoothly, releases happen sooner, and productivity and customer satisfaction improve.

Axify Alternative: Better Metrics + Forecast

Jira gives you numbers, but Axify helps you make sense of them. As we explained above, we don’t advocate for story points. So, instead of relying on them, Axify enables you to track the throughput of completed items to give you a clearer picture of actual work done.

You also get insights into your work in progress, lead time for changes, and an issue type time investment metric to see where time is spent and where work gets stuck.

Need a better way to predict delivery dates? Axify uses Monte Carlo simulations to help you forecast project timelines based on accurate engineering metrics – no guesswork, just data-driven predictions. With real-time data, you can stop reacting to problems and start planning with confidence.

How to Get Metrics for Reporter in Jira?

To get reporter metrics in Jira, you can filter reports by the reporter field to track issue submissions per team member. This helps you see who is creating work, resolving tasks, and how quickly they respond.

Jira provides reporting features that allow you to analyze:

• Number of issues created: See how many tasks each team member has reported.
• Number of issues resolved: Track how many issues they’ve completed.
• Time to first response: Measure how quickly reporters receive an initial update.

These insights can help engineering managers like yourself identify workload distribution, track responsiveness, and spot issues with team collaboration. Instead of guessing who is overloaded or where delays happen, you get real-time data to support better team decisions.

Axify Gives You the Metrics That Actually Matter

Jira floods you with data, but Axify gives you real-time data that drives action. Instead of sifting through endless reports, you get an easy-to-read dashboard with views at the team, multi-team, and organizational levels.

Here's what Axify offers that's better than Jira:

• Axify goes beyond simple issue tracking: While some tools (like Jira) rely solely on issue tracker data to monitor incidents, Axify captures a broader range of impact sources—including deployment failures, change failure rates, and recovery times. This ensures teams get a complete picture of software stability, not just a list of logged bugs.
• Smarter reports: You can focus on your insights into team performance, not just task tracking.
• Predictive analytics: With Axify, you can get forecasts based on actual trends, not guesswork.
• No coding required: Anyone can set it up, which makes it beginner-friendly.
• Metrics that matter: Unlike Jira, Axify prioritizes outcomes over output.

In addition, we have engineering-specific integrations tailored for tracking DORA, flow, and SPACE metrics without the complexity of traditional project management tools like Jira.  

Axify helps you track productivity trends without drowning you in unnecessary data.

Stop guessing and start making data-driven decisions. Book a demo today to see how Axify can transform the way your team tracks performance.

FAQ

What are metrics in Jira?

Metrics in Jira are data points that help you track progress, productivity, and efficiency within your projects. You can measure sprint progress, issue resolution times, and workflow bottlenecks using Jira's built-in reports.

How to measure performance in Jira?

You can measure performance in Jira by tracking Agile software development metrics such as velocity, cycle time, and change lead time. Jira’s reports allow you to filter by issue type, sprint, or team to help you analyze trends and make improvement plans.

Does Jira have analytics?

Jira offers various analytics tools, including burndown charts, cumulative flow diagrams, and velocity reports. However, its analytics focus on task tracking rather than high-level business metrics, making it harder to get a complete picture of team culture and long-term performance trends.