“The company had Jira, tasks, reports, and managers. Yet deadlines were still missed. It turned out: 30% of the time isn’t spent on tasks, but between them.”
How Jira Can Mislead Even Senior Developers
Imagine a team has been using Jira for six months: all tasks are detailed, statuses are updated, reports are generated automatically. Yet deadlines keep slipping. Why?
The problem is that Jira only shows what you enter into it. It tracks “Task Created,” “In Progress,” “Done,” but it doesn’t see what happens between these states — and that’s where the real life of a project hides.
A senior developer may spend three days on a task. In Jira, it shows as “3 days of development.” In reality: 40% of the time went to understanding requirements, 25% to waiting for code reviews, 20% to task switching, and only 15% to actual coding. Jira shows the result, but not the process.
Time Tracking Reveals What Task Managers Can’t See
When you start tracking real time, a shocking fact emerges: only 60–70% of the workday is spent directly on tasks from the board. The rest is context switching, discussions, waiting, and small breaks.
This isn’t bad — it’s normal. The problem is managers plan based on “clean” Jira estimates, ignoring this reality.
Yaware.TimeTracker x Jira
With Yaware.TimeTracker, this becomes especially clear — the system automatically logs micro-pauses, task switches, and waiting times. These are the “invisible time slices” that Jira simply doesn’t capture.
Result: you finally understand why a “two-week sprint” stretches into a month. Not because the team works slowly, but because plans ignore the real workflow rhythm.
Case Study: A Product Team
A Kyiv IT company ran an experiment. They took a team of 8 developers using Jira and added time tracking for a month.
Results:
- Planned: 240 hours per sprint (8 people × 30 hours “pure” work)
- Actual task time: 165 hours
- Untracked activities: 75 hours (code reviews, communication, research)
It turned out that 31% of time goes to activities not reflected in Jira as separate tasks, yet essential for the project. This is not “procrastination” — it’s a necessary part of development.
The case became possible only after integrating Yaware.TimeTracker with Jira. Time tracking didn’t disrupt work — it simply added visibility Jira couldn’t provide. Within weeks, the team began to see not just tasks, but the dynamics between them.
After this experiment, the company started planning sprints with a 0.7 coefficient applied to “clean” estimates. Deadlines stopped being missed.
How Companies Combine Jira and Time Tracking — and Why It Works
The smartest teams don’t abandon Jira. They complement it with time tracking.
- Jira shows: “what” and “when”
- Time tracking shows: “how long really” and “what happens in between”
Comparison:
- Jira sees: Task A (2 days) → Task B (1 day) → Task C (3 days)
- Time tracking sees: Task A (1.2 days work + 0.8 days waiting) → 0.3 days switching → Task B (0.7 days work + 0.3 days communication) → Task C (2.1 days work + 0.9 days research)
These views don’t contradict each other — they are two levels of project understanding. Jira gives structure; time tracking gives reality.
If you already use Jira, you can integrate it with Yaware.TimeTracker in minutes. See your team in real time — not in tasks, but in the actual workflow rhythm.
👉 Activate a free Yaware trial with Jira integration — no commitments, no risk.
