In sprint cumulative flow in Jira

I wanted to experiment using cumulative flow in Jira on a Scrum project. I tried it on my last 2 projects, the first time manually and the second time using Jira. We found it was a good addition to Burndown charts. I also found that it was a great predictor of completion. It also exposed work in progress (Inventory) and start to end time (throughput).

In Sprint Cumulative Flow

It is one of the tools that I use to reduce reliance on estimating.

It was labour intensive when done manually, however it was zero effort to maintain in Jira, just a bit tricky, so here are the steps

How to do it?

You need to go to Board configuration

Click on Configure then select Quick Filters and create this filter:

Click the "Add" button then select your Agile Board and Select Reports:

When you have done this select the Cumulative Flow report as follows:

Now configure the report to set the start and end dates to match your current sprint as follows:

Then refine the report to select all the columns you require and select the newly created "Current Sprint" filter.

Then the report should look like this, although this is for a brand new project and is very early on.

If you measure left to right (from orange to green in tis case) you get lead time. If you measure vertically you get WIP. Use this in your information radiator as exposure of this information will drive improvement. Take a screenshot to compare sprint by sprint how you are improving.

You can configure a filter to remove subtasks as follows, but I prefer to track them all.

The only wrinkle is that you have to manually set the start and end dates for new sprints. Good luck!