Track waste

For work items, you can track waste time for items in the following metaphases: In Progress, In Testing, and In Delivery. Waste tracking is not available for items in the New and Done metaphases. For details on the item workflow, see Workflow.

For work items, the waste category can be closely related to the phase. For example, if an item's phase is Waiting for QA, you can set its waste category to Waiting time.

Waste tracking for quality items helps you identify waste caused by tests stuck in specific phases such as Awaiting Review, or Blocked test runs.

For quality items, the waste category can be related to native status or to user-defined fields, depending on your specific workflow. For example, if a quality item's native status is Blocked or In Progress, this aligns more clearly to waste categories than an item's phase. Similarly if the native status of a run is Planned, this aligns more with the waste category of Planned than the run's phase.

Work and quality items: In the grid view, add specific columns to analyze waste. For details, see Fields to analyze waste.

Work items: In the Gantt chart, the waste time is displayed as a line under the item timeline bars. If an item moves between phases that are not associated with waste categories, a break in the line is displayed.

Work and quality items: In the dashboard, you can add a summary widget and configure it to display:

• Waste time across releases
• Waste time per team or category

Note: In the widget, a work item can be listed under different categories if it has waste associated with those categories.

Work items: Displays the total time spent on an item in days. Use the data in these columns to consider an item's waste time in relation to the item's overall cycle or flow time.

An item's cycle and flow times are calculated as follows:

• By default, time calculation starts when an item moves to the In Progress metaphase. If the item is in the New metaphase, the time displayed is zero.
• If an item moves back to metaphase New after being In Progress for some time, the overall time spent in the New metaphase is excluded from the item cycle/flow time.
• Non-working days are excluded from the cycle/flow time calculation.

Note: Flow time tracking is not available for epics.

For details, see Cycle and flow times.

Work and quality items: Displays the category defined in the Waste category list. The category displayed depends on an item's current phase and whether the item meets the condition of a relevant business rule:

• If an item's phase is associated with a waste category specified in the business rule, the waste category is displayed.
• If an item's phase is not associated with any waste category, the default category of None is displayed.

Note: The waste category is automatically updated every time an item is saved.

Work and quality items: Displays the time an item spent in a phase associated with a current waste category, as specified in the business rule condition.

Non-working days are excluded from the waste calculation.

When a backlog item is converted, waste tracking for a new item starts from scratch.

For example, when a defect is converted to a feature, the defect's waste time is reset, and waste tracking for the feature starts from scratch.

When an item is moved to another workspace, the item's waste time remains unchanged, and continues being measured in the target workspace.

Note:

• An item's source workspace phases are available in the target workspace timeline, even if the phases do not exist in the target workflow.

• Waste is not tracked for phases that are not associated with waste in the target workspace.

  If an item's phase was associated with waste in the source workspace, but not in the target workspace, waste tracking for that phase stops when the item moves to the target workspace.

  Any waste associated with this phase, already recorded in the source workspace, is transferred to the target workspace. No extra waste time in the same phase is added after the item moves to the target workspace.