Glossary

3 min read

Advanced Boards uses a few words of its own for how work flows and how it is measured. Each term is spelled as the app spells it.

Boards and their flow #

Term	Meaning
Board	A view over the Jira work items of one source: a space, a saved filter, JQL or a Jira board
Flow	What each status means on a board: its state classes and the two boundaries, commitment and delivery
Flow version	One published version of a flow. A new one recalculates the board’s history
State class	What a status means for measuring: “Not started”, “Active”, “Waiting” or “Done”. For example, “In Review” is Active, and “Waiting for customer” is Waiting, because nobody works on it then. A status with no class reads “Not mapped”
Commitment	When a cycle starts, by default the first entry into an Active status
Delivery	When a cycle ends, by default the first entry into the flow’s Done class, which is not Jira’s Done category
Cycle	One pass of a work item from commitment to delivery. A reopened work item starts a new cycle
Rework	A later cycle of a work item delivered before, or whose first delivery cannot be proven. Analyze keeps it apart
Calendar	The working days and hours of a board, with its days off. A figure you ask for in business hours counts only this working time
Counting level	Which work item types count as one item: “Epics”, “Stories and tasks” or “Subtasks”
Unmapped	The Work column that holds work items in a status no column of the board draws. They still count in WIP
Swimlane	A row on Work. A board draws a lane for each space, work item type, parent or assignee, or one for each ordered JQL rule. Work items no lane takes sit in the unmatched row
Blocker	What makes a work item count as blocked: a value in the flag field, a blocking link to unfinished work, or a blocked status. The time it stays blocked is kept as a blocked interval

Flow metrics #

Term	Meaning
WIP	Work in progress: the work items committed and not yet delivered
Cycle time	How long one cycle took, from commitment to delivery, waiting time included
Lead time	How long a work item took from its creation in Jira to the delivery of the cycle counted
First delivery	The first time a work item reaches the delivery boundary. A later delivery of the same work item is rework
Throughput	How many work items were delivered for the first time in each period
Work item age	How long an unfinished cycle has run since its commitment
Percentile	A value with that share of the values at or below it. At p85, 85% of the cycles took this long or less
Cohort	The set of work items a figure is counted over, such as the cycles delivered in the chosen range

Agreements #

Term	Meaning
Policy	An agreement a board records, such as a WIP limit on the whole board or one column
Class of service	A group of work items that share one expectation, chosen by a query
SLE	The service level expectation: the agreed days a work item of one class should take. Ages are compared with it
Expedite	The class of service marked as the urgent lane. A board or column WIP limit can leave it out

Views, results and risk #

Term	Meaning
Saved view	A named setup of a board’s Work screen, chosen from the Saved views menu
Stakeholder view	A view of a board published under Share for the people who follow its work
Forecast run	One saved answer to “When will this scope finish?” or “How much can finish by a date?”, kept up to 30 days
Horizon	The last day a forecast run looks at. A “How much” run asks you for it as its Horizon date, at most 730 days past the start
Milestone	A target on Plan’s timeline: a date, a Jira release, a sprint end or an external date
Trial	One possible future that a forecast builds from the board’s own delivery history. A run draws many trials, and the probability of an answer is the share of trials that reached it
Risk signal	A current sign that work is at risk: age against the expectation, overload, blockers, dates or dependencies

The Advanced edition #

The terms of the Advanced edition (portfolios, value streams, scenarios, templates, rollouts, backtests, rules and alerts, forecast schedules, policy experiments and AI investigation) are in Advanced edition glossary.

On the screen #

Term	Meaning
(i)	A small information icon beside a figure or a heading. Select it to read what the figure means or how it was made
Lozenge	A small colored label that names a state, such as “Paused” or “Partial”
Context strip	The line above a screen’s figures with Data as of, Permissions as of and the coverage

Time and coverage #

Term	Meaning
Data as of	When the data on the screen was taken from Jira
Permissions as of	When the app last checked which work items you may see for these figures
Coverage	How many of the work items a screen counts it could use, with the counts. A “Partial” or “Partial history” lozenge shows only while some are missing. Work items hidden from you are never counted or revealed