Tracking lead and cycle times of Linear issues
Mar 5, 2025
Timing metrics help you to understand how long it takes to complete a task. Cycle time measures the elapsed time when work starts on an issue until it’s ready for delivery.
With Screenful, you can track timings for Linear issues with 15 different charts, and share that information with other stakeholders by scheduling automated reports.
Contents:
Integrating Screenful with Linear
Screenful provides multidimensional analytics of the data in Linear. You can slice & dice your data with 15 different chart types, and click-through to drill into details.
You need to authorize Screenful to access the Linear API to get started. Once done, you will be shown a list of teams.
Once you have selected one or more teams for importing, you will be shown a suggested workflow mapping. This information is used when calculating the timing metrics. You can accept or adjust the suggested settings.
Your setup is complete, and you can start creating charts and reports. For more instructions, see the guide for setting up Screenful with Linear.
See timings for work in progress
To create a custom chart with Screenful, go to the Charts tab and click Add new chart in the top right corner. A modal is opened with a set of chart templates. You can either create a new chart from scratch or pick one of the predefined charts.
You can filter the template list using the top search box. Searching "timings" shows the charts related to the timing metrics. Click the first template called Timings for work in progress:
The resulting chart shows the current issues in progress and how long they've been in progress so far:
The Time in progress column shows how long ago that issue was started. The summary on the bottom shows the average time in progress across all issues currently in progress.
When you hover the mouse over the question mark, you see the historical movements between workflow states:
On the modal, you see all the movements between the columns in your board and how long the issue stayed in that state. This view shows all the moves between the states, including the bounces backwards in the pipeline.
The rightmost column shows the totals per workflow state:
The Timings by workflow state column shows the total time the issue has spent on different states so far.
You can use the Task list chart to display the timings for any Linear issue.
See the trend of your cycle time
The Cycle time trend shows your cycle time over the selected date range. You can filter the data according to issue type to track a specific aspect of your work, such as bugs, features, or support tickets. Timings are calculated from the completed items.
Cycle time is a measure of the elapsed time when work starts on an item (story, task, bug etc.) until it’s ready for delivery.
What can you do with that data? Let's consider a situation where your team is asked by business owners how long does it take to implement a certain functionality. Instead of just making a guess, the team can look at the data to see how long it has taken in the past to complete similar tasks, and provide a data-driven estimate.
Another good way of visualising cycle times is by using a scatter plot, which presents data points in two dimensions according to the selected variables - cycle time and completion date.
Each circle corresponds to a completed issue. The higher the circle, the longer it took to complete it. The horizontal axis is time. That allows you to visually see the outliers. For example, you can see how many issues took more than 7 days to complete.
The dotted horizontal lines represent the percentiles. The default ones shown are 50th, 85th, and 90th percentile. The left edge shows the number of days, and the right edge shows how many percentages of the issues were completed in less than that time.
See how long each workflow step takes
While it is helpful to know your overall cycle time and its trend, you may want to dig in deeper. The Cycle time per workflow state chart shows the average cycle time per workflow step. The numbers represent the average time an issue has stayed in that specific workflow state over the selected period.
This chart tells you which steps in your workflow are the quickest, and which are the slowest. For example, if tasks spend a lot of time in waiting in some specific state, removing that delay would increase your throughput, and overall delivery speed.
You can also track the cycle time trend of any individual workflow state. Here's a line chart showing the trend for the In review state:
In this example, the review time has decreased by 38,5% during the selected time period, which is a positive trend. If the trend turns, and the review step starts getting slower, you might consider adding more QA resources or start looking for other ways to reduce delays in that specific step.
Set working hours
When you create a chart using the Time in state metric, there is a checkbox only working hours. When selected, the chart will calculate the timing metrics from the working hours only.
The working hours can be specified in the Account settings:
You can also choose to only include working days on the Burndown chart by checking Exclude non-working days in the chart editor. When doing so, the ideal burndown is flat during the non-working time (e.g. weekends).
Create a cycle time report from a template
The quickest way to get the cycle time metrics is by using a report template. Go to the Reports tab and click Add new report:
A modal opens, showing the available templates. Select Timings report. You'll get a complete report containing the metrics introduced in this article.
The best thing is that each chart in the report is configurable so you can create the exact report you need.
Screenful provides advanced charts and reports for Linear. To get started, see the guide for setting up Screenful with Linear.
Let us know if you have questions or feedback by contacting hello@screenful.com. To stay on the loop, read our blog, or follow us on LinkedIn.
