Getting started

Changeline works on the versions and bugs Jira Cloud already holds. Install it and open a space’s Changeline tab: the five DORA measures are there at once, for the space’s releases of the last 90 days, with nothing to connect and nothing to set up first. Each figure says whether it is better or worse than the days just before, and shows the figure before in its count. The tabs under the figures list what was counted.

Changeline only reads Jira. It writes nothing to a work item or to a setting.

Where to find it

• A space’s own figures: the Changeline tab in the space. It counts that space’s releases and failures.
• Across your spaces: Apps › Changeline. Choose spaces, a saved filter or a JQL search, then Show metrics. A Period chip sets 30, 90, 180 or 365 days, and a Space chip narrows the rows when they come from more than one space. When they do, a Spaces tab sets each space’s five figures side by side. Copy link opens the same view for someone else, as them.
• On a work item: the Changeline panel, from View app actions, the hexagon under the work item’s title, and a glance of it in the Changeline group of the Details column. It shows where that work item’s time went and whether the release it shipped in failed. See The work item panel.
• The gadget for a Jira dashboard: Add gadget, then pick Changeline. It shows the five figures and how each moved. Edit picks a space, a saved filter or a JQL search, and 30 or 90 days. Open in Changeline goes to the page on the same scope.
• Changeline settings under Jira settings › Apps › Changeline settings, for Jira admins. See Settings.

First steps for a team

1. Open the space’s Changeline tab. The figures are counted from what the space has already: its released versions and its failures.
2. Hover a figure. The hover says how it is counted and what it was in the days before.
3. Open the Releases and Failures tabs to see each release and failure that went into the figures. Trend shows the weeks, and its Chart chip picks which measure the chart draws. Where the lead time goes, under the figures, says whether work waits to start, is in progress or waits for a release.
4. To make the figures truer, release versions in Jira with their release date, set a bug’s Affects versions to the release it came from and its Fix versions to the release that fixes it, and give incidents a work type called Incident.

What the figures need from your work items

• Deployment frequency needs released versions with a release date. A team that ships without versions can count work items that reach Done instead. See What counts as a deployment.
• Change lead time needs work items in those releases. Their history gives the day work started, and the three stages of Where the lead time goes.
• Change fail rate needs failures that point at a release. See Failures and recovery time.
• Failed deployment recovery time needs failures with the release that fixes them in their Fix versions, else a Done date.
• Deployment rework rate needs the same Fix versions.

How each is counted is on The five measures.

What it asks of Jira

It reads spaces, versions, work items and their history as the person using it. It keeps its settings, an hour’s cache of the figures, ten minutes’ cache of each work item panel and each person’s remembered scope. See What is stored.

DORA here is the research programme at Google behind these five measures, not the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act. DORA is a trademark of Google LLC, and Changeline is not made or endorsed by Google.