How to Search Cycle Time and Lead Time Using JQL

Increasing productivity is a goal for every company, and the same is true for employees. However, increasing velocity doesn’t always require major changes or transformations. A combination of a few quick and easy solutions can also deliver significant gains by helping automate unnecessary tasks.

A good example is being able to see a ticket’s Cycle Time directly on the issue without going to a dashboard or creating a report in Timepiece. In this use case, we’ll show you how to track Cycle Time and Lead  Time (or any Duration Between Statuses metric you choose) directly on an issue, how to access these metrics quickly using JQL, and how to identify bottlenecks faster to optimize your Jira workflow.

It takes data, not assumptions, to optimize Jira workflows. You must monitor how long work items remain in any status in order to pinpoint bottlenecks and measure team velocity. There are two crucial metrics:

Cycle Time: The duration of active work, from start to finish.

Lead Time: The total time from the initial request to delivery, including backlog waiting time.

When Lead Time is much longer than Cycle Time, that shows your team completes work quickly, but planning or backlog management is slow.

The Native JQL Limitation

As we all know, Jira Query Language (JQL) is a search engine, not an aggregator. It can filter by date, user, or status. But duration between date fields and the total number of hours spent in a status cannot be calculated by native JQL.
That means you cannot use standard JQL to search for problems based on Cycle Time or Lead Time.

The Solution: Timepiece Custom Fields

Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira solves this by introducing duration-based custom fields. Timepiece calculates the total time work items spend in selected statuses and writes the result directly to the Jira issue.

This transforms historical durations into concrete, queryable data points visible directly on the issue screen. Timepiece calculates these values on a schedule you set, or you can trigger a run manually from the Custom Fields Admin page when you need current numbers right away.

How to Create and Configure the Custom Field

Create the Field: Go to your Jira Custom Fields settings, create a new field (e.g., "Cycle Time"), and select the Timepiece - Time in Status custom field type. Add it to your relevant screens.

Open Settings: Open the new field's context menu and navigate to Contexts and default values > Edit Custom Field Configuration.

Define the Metric: Under Statuses to Track, select the specific workflow statuses that make up your metric.

Finalize: Set your preferred view format, working calendar (customize your calendar view to maintain a full 24/7 schedule or hide non-working hours whenever you choose), target JQL (to determine which issues are calculated), and automated update interval. Click Save.

For a detailed step-by-step guide on creating and configuring the field, check out this guide.

How to Search Using Duration-Based JQL

After the custom field values are calculatedf, you can search and filter work items directly in Jira. Because they function as standard custom fields, they fully support duration-based JQL.

Open the JQL editor: Go to the Jira search page.

Enter the field name and unit: The unit isn't fixed to the field's display format. Append .days, .hours, or .minutes to the custom field name to search in that specific unit.

Add a comparison operator to complete your query and filter the results. For example, "Cycle Time.hours" > 48 finds work items with active time exceeding 48 hours, and "Cycle Time.days" > 10 finds items with active time exceeding 10 days.

Organizations are unable to efficiently search or automate based on precise time calculations due to native JQL. By directly adding the current Cycle Time and Lead Time durations to the issue level, Timepiece Custom Fields overcome this restriction. This gives teams precise, queryable data they can use to power JQL searches, boards, dashboards, and Jira Automation rules, not just a one-off report.

Visit the Atlassian Marketplace and start a free 30-day trial of Timepiece – Time in Status for Jira. It is free on Cloud for up to 10 users. If you'd like to see it run on your own workflow first, book a live demo with our team.