A little more than four years ago we launched ZenHub as a lightweight browser extension to bring Agile task boards into GitHub. Back then, our mission was simple: to unify development and project management in a single system, and provide a way for teams to manage the entire lifecycle of their software projects from within GitHub.
While our mission has remained largely the same, the world of software development has rapidly evolved over the past four years. Software projects are increasingly more complex, involving more stakeholders than ever before. To combat this complexity, top performing software teams need powerful tools to improve their understanding of cross-org dependencies and identify risks and blockers early in a project.
Today we’re excited to announce the new ZenHub Reporting Suite so teams can proactively plan, track, and visualize progress on their most critical projects in GitHub. Along with an already robust group of reports, we’re excited to add a brand new report to help teams measure the lead-time and cycle-time of Issues through their board: Control Point Charts.
How to Get Started with ZenHub’s Reporting Suite
ZenHub users can access our new reporting suite directly from the left hand navigation menu. Clicking the arrow next to the Reports tab will expand the selection and allow you to jump directly to any individual report. Clicking on Overview will bring you to a new page where you can learn more about each report in detail as well as the types of data-driven insights that each report generates for your team.
Don’t have a ZenHub account? Sign up for a free 14-day trial to use the new reporting suite.
A Robust Reporting Suite
ZenHub currently provides five different built-in reports: Burndown Charts, Velocity Charts, Release Reports, Cumulative Flow Diagrams, and launching today, Control Point Charts. Each highly visual report offers unique insights into a software team’s workflow to better identify whether projects are on track. Teams that regularly review the data-driven insights from the Reporting Suite minimize potential risks by making informed proactive changes to their workflow.
The Reports That Make Up The ZenHub Reporting Suite
Burndown Charts and Velocity Reports
Based on GitHub Milestones, Burndown Charts help teams understand how they’re progressing over the course of a given Milestone (typically referred to as a sprint). At a glance, teams quickly understand whether they’re ahead or behind schedule. More importantly, these visual reports give teams the insights they need to adjust accordingly for the best chance of completing the sprint on time and in scope.
Velocity Reports provide a historical view of a team’s performance over past sprints, including how many Issues and story points they’ve been able to complete. Understanding velocity not only makes planning future sprints more data-driven, it helps teams to establish a baseline from which they can aim to continuously improve.
Release Reports
ZenHub’s Release Report displays the direct impact that changes in scope have on a projected delivery date. Teams use this report to visualize how adding and removing Issues from a Release impacts the predicted end date based on the team's velocity. Using this information, teams have more informed conversations around what trade-offs to make to ship on time.
Cumulative Flow Diagrams and Control Point Charts (New!)
Cumulative Flow Diagrams and Control Point Charts are the newest additions to ZenHub’s reporting suite and help teams measure throughput, uncover blockers, and identify bottlenecks in their workflow. While these two reports are typically associated with Kanban, Cumulative Flow Diagrams and Control Point Charts are used by many teams, regardless of their methodology.
Where Cumulative Flow Diagrams provide teams with the ability to visualize the throughput of Issues within ZenHub Boards, Control Point Charts extend this ability by allowing teams to understand how long issues spend in each pipeline on their Board. With this valuable data, teams measure two critical metrics, cycle-time and lead-time.
To learn more about how your team can leverage Control Point Charts to measure lead-time and cycle-time, visit our detailed help article here.
Our new Reporting Suite is just the beginning of many exciting new features and functionality coming to ZenHub over the coming months. To see what we’re currently working on and to submit feedback, visit our revamped Product Portal.