In fast-paced software development environments, data-driven decision-making is not just a competitive advantage—it’s a necessity. That’s where Jira reports come into play. They provide vital insights into team performance, project timelines, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement. Yet, not all Jira reports are created equal. Knowing how to craft actionable, customized reports that align with your team's specific workflows can be the difference between project chaos and clarity.
For many teams, Jira is the backbone of task and project management. But while Jira's flexibility is one of its greatest strengths, it can also overwhelm users when it comes to reporting. Between built-in options and custom solutions, users often struggle to make sense of which reports to generate and how to interpret them. If you’re looking to upgrade your Jira reporting skills and transform your team’s visibility, the comprehensive guide offered by Testomat.io is exactly what you need.
You can read the full article here:
https://testomat.io/blog/detailed-guide-on-creating-jira-reports-for-your-team/
Also available in anchor format: jira reports
The Real Purpose Behind Jira Reports
At their core, Jira reports are about turning data into understanding. They serve as a bridge between your team's efforts and your stakeholders' expectations. Good reports reduce ambiguity, validate progress, and expose risks before they escalate. Whether you're managing a Scrum team, working with Kanban boards, or running hybrid methodologies, reporting serves as a feedback loop that continually fuels improvement.
But the challenge lies in setting up the right reports for the right audience. Executives may want high-level status updates, while project managers prefer burndown charts and velocity graphs. Developers might benefit from issue analysis over time. A generic, one-size-fits-all report won’t cut it. You need to design dashboards and data views tailored to your team's actual needs, workflows, and priorities.
Built-In Jira Reports vs. Custom Reports
Jira offers an extensive suite of native reports, especially for Scrum and Kanban boards. These include burndown charts, sprint reports, cumulative flow diagrams, velocity charts, and control charts. However, the built-in options can be limited if your workflows are complex or span across multiple boards and projects.
That’s when custom jira reports become indispensable. With tools like Jira Query Language (JQL), dashboard gadgets, and third-party reporting integrations, you can create visualizations that go far beyond Jira’s default options. This flexibility is both empowering and dangerous—because without a clear understanding of what to measure and why, teams can easily fall into vanity metrics or build reports that look impressive but provide little actionable value.
The guide from Testomat outlines the specific use cases where built-in reports shine and when it’s better to build your own. It also discusses how to set SMART goals for each report, so you're not just collecting data, but aligning reporting metrics with real business outcomes.
Understanding What to Track
The secret to impactful reporting lies in asking the right questions before you ever touch a dashboard.
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Is your team consistently delivering work in each sprint?
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Are any team members overloaded?
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How much scope is being added mid-sprint?
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Are bugs taking too long to resolve?
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How long does it take from ticket creation to delivery?
Each of these questions demands a different lens. Jira enables this by offering custom fields, automation, and dynamic filters. For example, if you want to understand how long tasks sit in the “In Review” status, you can create a control chart filtered by status duration. If you want to track blocked issues, a custom gadget showing blockers across sprints can shed light on chronic dependencies.
The jira reports guide from Testomat.io categorizes these use cases clearly, walking through how to generate each type of report with sample goals, configurations, and common pitfalls to avoid.
Making Reports Work for Every Role on the Team
Not every report should go to every team member. Tailoring visibility ensures people focus on what matters to them and are not distracted by irrelevant data.
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Product Owners may prioritize story completion, sprint goals, and backlog health.
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Project Managers might need reports showing overall progress, risk areas, or issue churn.
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Developers will find value in code review cycle times, issue resolution velocity, or blocker tracking.
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QA Teams can use bug aging reports and test execution trends to anticipate testing gaps.
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Executives typically want summary metrics across teams or projects to gauge delivery health.
Rather than drowning in data, a smart jira reports strategy delivers precision. That’s exactly what Testomat.io emphasizes—designing role-based reports and dashboards that serve actual decision-making.
Visual Storytelling with Dashboards
Numbers don’t mean much unless they tell a story. Dashboards in Jira allow you to combine multiple gadgets in a single view, making it easier to interpret trends over time.
For example, a sprint overview dashboard might include:
This approach gives stakeholders a full picture at a glance. But building an effective dashboard isn’t about cramming it with widgets. It’s about choosing the right widgets, filters, and layouts based on your goals. As the guide on jira reports explains, each dashboard should support a narrative: where the project is, where it's headed, and where attention is needed.
Using JQL for Reporting Mastery
Jira Query Language (JQL) is the hidden superpower behind truly custom reports. With JQL, you can query issues using complex logic across projects, epics, statuses, labels, and custom fields.
A few powerful use cases include:
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Showing issues that remained in "In Progress" for more than 7 days
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Listing all high-priority bugs not updated in the past 3 days
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Filtering issues completed within a specific sprint and tagged by QA
Mastering JQL gives you full control over your reports. In fact, Testomat.io’s article on jira reports includes practical examples of how to write these queries and plug them into dashboard widgets.
Integrating Test Management and Reporting
Test automation and quality assurance often get sidelined in reporting. But if you want a 360-degree view of your delivery pipeline, QA needs to be part of the picture. That’s where tools like Testomat.io step in.
Testomat integrates seamlessly with Jira, enabling QA metrics—like test coverage, passed/failed test cases, and regression reports—to appear right in your dashboards. This means non-technical stakeholders can see QA status without switching tools, and engineering leaders can spot testing bottlenecks early.
Adding QA to your jira reports helps balance the conversation between speed and quality. If your team is burning down story points but bugs are skyrocketing, that discrepancy must surface quickly—and be supported by data.
Automating Report Distribution
It’s one thing to build a report. It’s another to ensure people read it. With automation, Jira allows you to email dashboards or snapshots of reports on a schedule. For example:
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Send a sprint summary every Friday to stakeholders
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Notify team leads of unresolved blockers daily
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Share bug aging dashboards with QA weekly
Automated reports reduce the friction of status updates, eliminate manual reporting effort, and keep everyone informed without logging into Jira daily. The Testomat guide walks through how to configure automated report delivery and how to align it with sprint and release rhythms.
Measuring the Impact of Your Reporting Strategy
Once your jira reports are in place, how do you know they’re working? The impact of reporting isn’t in the charts themselves—it’s in the conversations they spark and the behaviors they change.
You’ll know your reporting strategy is working when:
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Standups become more focused because everyone understands the data
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Sprint planning sessions are smoother due to better historical context
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Stakeholders ask fewer ad hoc status questions
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Teams proactively spot and solve problems early
This shift from reactive firefighting to proactive decision-making is the hallmark of effective reporting.
Final Thought: Reports Should Empower, Not Overwhelm
At its best, reporting should create clarity, reduce friction, and align teams around shared objectives. At its worst, it becomes a cluttered maze of confusing data. The difference lies in intentionality.
Don’t report for the sake of reporting. Instead, follow a structured process:
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Define what you want to achieve
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Identify which metrics drive those outcomes
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Select the right Jira features or integrations
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Build intuitive dashboards and automate where possible
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Continually review and iterate based on feedback
For anyone who manages software projects in Jira and wants to unlock real insight, the guide on jira reports from Testomat.io is a must-read. It’s clear, actionable, and grounded in real-world scenarios, making it useful for beginners and advanced users alike.
By upgrading your Jira reporting strategy, you’re not just tracking work—you’re driving transformation.