What is ‘Commits Without a Ticket Reference’?
Commits Without a Ticket Reference is an often-overlooked engineering quality metric.
This metric tracks the percentage of code commits that do not have related issue management (e.g. Jira) Ticket References to enable a full audit history of each commit. In short, Commits Without a Ticket Reference figures out which – and how many – commits are missing Ticket References.
Mature Agile DevOps organisations recognise the need to view Agile software delivery as an end-to-end process. Hence, they also understand the need to track code commits back to the team/feature/Ticket to which they relate.
Breakdown and Filtering Options for Analysing Commits Without a Ticket Reference
Engineering metric dashboards like Plandek enable you to analyse delivery and engineering metrics in a number of different ways. In this case, Plandek will link to a Ticket Reference based on it being found in any of the below:
- Commit message
- Related Pull Request title
- Related Pull Request description
- Related Pull Request comments.
Plandek then cross-references the Ticket Reference with the data gathered from your workflow management system (e.g. Jira) to validate that the Ticket is genuine. Once validated, the commit will then be considered as linked to a Ticket.
Based on the date of commit the default over time chart (below) plots this percentage based on your date range selection. Breakdown/Filter options include Committer and Repository.
Related Metrics
Commits without a Ticket Reference is one of many delivery and engineering quality metrics. As such it is often used as part of a ‘balanced scorecard’ of engineering quality metrics surfaced in real-time at team and programme levels.
Such engineering quality metrics include:
Commits Without a Pull Request: This metric tracks the number of code commits that have been sent to the default branch that do not have a related pull request, and therefore have not been peer-reviewed. This is a major quality and security concern.
Key Use Cases
Commits without a Ticket Reference is often ignored but is an incredibly important (and useful) engineering quality metric. It is particularly important for:
- Delivery organisations introducing DevSecOps principles
- Large-scale delivery capabilities with distributed teams (onshore, offshore, contractor, inhouse) and potentially a higher turnover of engineering talent
- Teams involved in strategically-critical software delivery projects
- Security-sensitive and tightly regulated sectors such as fintech and MedTech.
Expected Outcomes
Maintaining very low levels of Commits without a Ticket Reference increases the traceability of code commits hence ultimately reducing defects and speeding up issue resolution. As such it is an important ‘hygiene’ metric to ensure the visibility and security of your end-to-end delivery process.
About Plandek
Plandek works by mining data from toolsets used by delivery teams (such as Jira, Git, CI/CD tools and Slack), to provide end-to-end delivery metrics/analytics to optimise software delivery predictability, risk management and process improvement.
Plandek is a global leader in this fast-growing field, recognised by Gartner as a top nine global vendor in their DevOps Value Stream Management Market Guide (published in Sept 2020).
Plandek is based in London and works with clients globally to apply predictive data analytics and machine learning to deliver software more effectively.
