Logging time on work items
Jira Software provides the flexibility to set your estimation and tracking statistics differently, depending on your team's needs. Time tracking features project schedule planning and time expectations management. Thanks to its reports, you can see the original and current time estimates for all the work items, and whether they are ahead or behind the original schedule.
Product teams often need to be able to estimate how long a product will take to deliver from sprint to sprint. As they work through the stories, the team will develop a cadence of completing <x> units of work they had estimated. This is also called velocity. The team has to track the amount of estimation units they've completed from sprint to sprint to know how much they can fit into each future sprint and be confident that all the work will be completed.
You can monitor the tracking time info by just watching the work item time tracking color bars.
Jira Work Management provides the flexibility to set your estimation and tracking statistics differently depending on your team's needs. Time tracking features project schedule planning and time expectation management. Thanks to its reports, you can see the original and current time estimates for all the work items, and whether they're ahead or behind the original schedule. Teams often need to estimate how long a product will take to deliver in order to have conviction that the work will be completed. You'll be able to easily monitor the tracking time info by watching the work item time tracking color bars.In Jira Service Management, you use Service Level Agreements (SLAs) configured by your administrator to help you track how well you're meeting customer expectations (e.g. responding to a request within 4 hours). You can use the time tracking feature in addition to SLAs to generate a workload report when you're working on a customer request with other agents, or when you need to track time spent fixing a problem that affects multiple customer requests.Jira admins can enable or disable time tracking for their entire Jira site. They can also control who has permission to log time. If you don’t see the time tracking field in your project, contact your Jira admin for help. Read more about configuring time tracking.
Here's how time tracking appears on a work item:
- The Estimated field displays the amount of time originally anticipated to resolve the work item
- The Remaining field displays the amount of time currently anticipated to resolve the work item
- The Logged field displays the amount of time logged working on the work item so far
- Choosing to include subtasks displays the aggregated time of a work item and all its subtasks
When you log time for the first time, the time spent is subtracted from the original estimate, and the resulting value is shown in the remaining estimate. When you log subsequent time, any time spent is subtracted from the remaining estimate.
- Time tracking panel: Shows the time logged so far, and time remaining. Click anywhere on the panel to log time.
If you have more than 100 child work items on a work item, you won't be able to include them in time tracking. We recommend limiting the number of child work items per work item to 100. Learn more about parent and child work items.
Before you begin
Make sure that your Jira admin has enabled time tracking, and that you have the Work on work items, Delete Work Logs, and Edit Work Logs project permissions. Anyone with the Browse Project permission can view time tracking info on a work item.
Set an original time estimate for a work item
Before you start work on a work item, you can set an original time estimate to calculate how long you believe it'll take to resolve it.
- Select the work item and choose the Original estimate field
Enter the amount of time you believe it'll take to complete work on the work item
Tips:
- You can specify additional time units after a time value 'X', such as Xw, Xd, Xh, or Xm, to represent weeks (w), days (d), hours (h), and minutes (m), respectively. If you type a number without specifying a time unit—you type "2" instead of "2h"—the default time unit that your Jira admin has specified will apply.
- Default conversion rates are 1w = 5d and 1d = 8h.
Estimate a work item
Before you start work on a work item, you can set a time or other type of estimate to calculate how much work you believe it'll take to resolve it. The field you set your estimate in depends on what's chosen as your estimation method. This will be set to story points (where you only estimate story and epic work types), original time estimate, work item count, or another custom method.
To set an estimate for a work item:
- Select the work item and choose the Story points, Original estimate, or custom estimation field.
Enter the number of story points or amount of time you believe it'll take to complete work on the work item.
You can use the time tracking report to compare the original and current time estimates for work items in the current project.
You can enter time estimates and log time in weeks (w), days (d), hours (h), and minutes (m). For example, you could estimate 3w or 2d 4h 30m.
Log time on a work item
Once you've started to work on a specific work item, log time to keep a record of it. This will let you compare your original estimate with how long it actually took to resolve the work item.
- Open the work item and select ••• > Log work (or click on the time tracking field)
Fill in the Log time fields and select Save
Edit a time log entry
You can edit your own time log entries if you've been granted the edit own work logs permission. You can also edit other people's time log entries if you've been granted the Edit All Work Logs permission.
- Open a work item and choose Work log in the activity section at the bottom of the work item.
- Find the time log entry and choose Edit.
- Complete any relevant fields and choose Save.
When editing or deleting a time log entry, the values that were entered before editing or deleted are still considered and used in the time remaining value. If the time remaining isn't what you expect, manually update it in the Edit work log modal.
Delete a time log entry
You can delete your own time log entries if you have been granted the Delete Own Work Logs permission. You can also delete other people's time log entries if you've been granted the Delete All Work Logs permission.
- Open a work item and choose Work log in the activity section at the bottom of the work item.
- Find the work log entry and choose Delete.
You'll be asked whether you'd like to adjust the remaining time estimate. If you choose to adjust it, you can let Jira automatically adjust the time remaining by adding back the deleted time or set it to another time manually.
You can perform this action with your keyboard via Jira’s command palette. Use command + K (for Mac) or Ctrl + K (for Windows) to open the command palette while you’re in Jira. Learn more about Jira’s command palette