What is Ticket Complexity?

As the name suggests, Ticket Complexity allows you to understand the relative complexity of your Tickets using three possible units of measurement, all based on the commits linked to your Tickets.

The units of measurement are:

1. Changed Lines: total inserted and deleted lines made in commits related to each Ticket.
2. Developers: number of unique individuals active on the commits and pull requests related to each Ticket.
3. Repositories: number of unique repositories affected by commits related to each Ticket.

This metric includes all completed Tickets within the selected time range that are linked to any commits.

Ticket Complexity by Story Points

Below we look at Ticket Complexity based on the number of developers involved. When breaking down this complexity score (average developers) by Story Points, we see a strong correlation between the story points value and complexity.

This, in turn, highlights very effective estimation by this team, where their estimates are able to correctly predict the actual complexity of the work.

Ticket Complexity by Story Points | Plandek Dashboard

Ticket Complexity – Changed Lines for different Issue Types

Using the Changed Lines unit of measurement and then breaking down the metric by Issue Type, we can start to understand the relative complexity of different types of change.

Below, when looking over time, we can see a fairly consistent complexity of the Feature issue type compared to the more sporadic complexity of Technical Improvements.

Ticket Complexity drill-down char | Plandek Dashboard

Related metrics

Ticket Complexity is an important delivery efficiency metric. Other delivery efficiency metrics that are relevant to be viewed in tandem include:

• Work in Progress (WIP): reflects the number of work items started but not finished (according to the Scrum Team’s definition of “Workflow”).
• Code Cycle Time: looks at all completed Pull Requests (e.g. closed, merged, declined etc) within the specified time range and shows the average hours to complete from when the PR was opened. Not only that, but it provides full insight into the different stages that a PR goes through.
• Flow Efficiency: a broader delivery efficiency metric which looks at the proportion of time a Ticket remains in an ‘active’ versus ‘inactive’ state across a Cycle Time or Lead Time.

About Plandek

Plandek is an intelligent analytics platform that helps software engineering teams deliver value faster and more predictably.

Celebrated by Gartner and Forrester as a ‘leading global vendor’, Plandek mines data from delivery teams’ toolsets and gives them the opportunity to optimise their delivery process using both intelligent insights and predictive analytics. 

Co-founded in 2017 by Dan Lee (founder of Globrix) and Charlie Ponsonby (founder of Simplifydigital), Plandek is based in London and currently services the UK, Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Find out more about Plandek here: The Plandek Difference.