Say-do ratio report

Let’s explore comprehensive set of use cases for tracking and interpreting say-do ratio reports. These charts can be build with these Jira apps:

• Velocity Charts
• Agile Reports and Gadgets

How to track and analyze say-do ratio metric (KPI)

The velocity chart below has been created as a gadget on a Jira Dashboard. Let’s do analysis of say-do ratio metrics for “Sprint 4”:

We use percentage values instead of absolute values as they are the best fit for the concept of say-do analysis.

Absolute values in metrics table below the chart are in story points, but in chart’s settings you can choose the estimation field to be any numeric Jira issue field like time estimates, issue count, etc.

“Initial commitment” metric

This metric reflects team’s commitment for the sprint, or “say” part in the “say-do” term. In other words, this is the work scope which team has planned for the sprint during Sprint Planning meeting.

When you use percentages, this metric is often considered as an anchor - all other metrics are calculated relatively to this one. Therefore, initial commitment’s value is 100%.

“Final commitment” metric

This metric reflects the final amount of work for the sprint which includes:

• added work
• removed work
• estimation changes

In this example, we see that the total amount of work has grown +40% to initial commitment. That’s a huge change to a sprint’s scope.

“Total scope change” metric

There is a simple math behind this metric: “Total scope change” = “Final commitment” – “Initial commitment”.

‍We can make the chart much more informative if we replace “Total scope change”. The formula is: “Total scope change” = “Added work” – “Removed work” + “Estimation change”.

So, on the chart below the math for sprint 4 is the following:

“Completed work (initial)” metric

This metric shows the amount of initially planned work that has been completed in a sprint. That’s actually the “do” part in the “say-do”.

This is the tricky metric that can be interpreted in two ways but don’t worry: we handle both cases of the interpretation with a simple “toggle on/off” setting:

Let’s analyze the metric for sprint 4 to understand the difference.

Case #1 (the default setting): calculate metric’s value based on the initial commitment

In this case we take two aspects into consideration:

• Initially planned work items (all work to which team committed during sprint planning)
• Initial estimates for the planned work

So, in this case the value of “Completed work (initial)” is 23 story points (#1 on the chart), and it differs from the value of “Completed work” (27 sp) (#2 on the chart):

Case #2: calculate metric’s value based on the final commitment

In this case we take two aspects into consideration:

• Initially planned work items (all work to which team committed during sprint planning)
• Final estimates for the initially planned work that accounts for estimation changes

For the sprint 4 the value of “Completed work (initial) metric is 27 story points (#3 on the chart) that takes into account estimation changes for tasks #13 and #14 on the chart above.

“Completed work” metric

This metric reflects total amount of work completed during sprint. It includes both, initially planned and work added during sprint.

Show average say-do ratio

Average say-do ratio metric can become a great KPI for your team, or across several teams (if you work in Scaled Agile environment). If you want to promote “say-do ratio” metric to KPI, we would definetely recommend to configure your chart to include averages (#1) and zoom out your timeline to months or quarters (#2) :

How to configure a “say-do ratio chart” as Jira Dashboard gadget

In step 1 do the following:

#1: Choose one or several Scrum boards (for team or cross-team charts respectively)

#2: Specify estimation field (can be any numeric Jira field, the default value is “Story Points”)

In step 2 there are few important options to choose from:

#1: Choose relevant metrics and decide whether you want to show averages.
#2: We’ve discussed above two cases of how “Completed work (initial” can be calculated - your turn to make a decision here.

#3: That’s where you choose what metric is going to be an anchor one (in other words what metric is 100% on the chart).

#4: Choose whether you want to see absolute or percentage values on the chart.

Apps used in this example

Use our examples to build your own use cases on the Jira Dashboard.

Both apps used in these examples have 30-day free trial and are completely free for teams under 10 people:

• Velocity Charts
• Agile Reports and Gadgets