Focus summary

The focus summary allows you to easily explore what your teams and organization are spending the most effort (FTEs) on.

What you can see in the focus summary

Above the table, you'll see a panel showing total effort for the selected team and timeframe, measured in full-time equivalent (FTE) months. This is the full capacity in FTE months.

When you apply additional filters, a filtered effort panel appears, showing how much of the total capacity matches all your current filters and appears in the table.

The table displays all issues matching your selected timeframe, team, and filters. Each issue can be expanded to reveal matching child issues.

For each issue, you'll see:

• Issue details

  • Issue name and key

  • Status

  • Time spent in progress

  • Total child issues

  • Lifetime effort: Total FTE months invested since the issue was created

• Contributors: Individual contributors with effort attributed to the issue

• Effort breakdown: FTE months invested in the issue and its percentage share among all shown work (during the selected timeframe)

  • Includes a monthly trend breakdown for the selected timeframe

Interpreting effort trends

Inactivity

Winding up vs winding down

• Inactivity: The effort column displays the aggregate number of FTE months during the selected timeframe, while the trend column indicates whether there have been inactive months. This can surface a lack of focus in key initiatives.

• Winding up vs. winding down: The shape of the trend breakdown can also tell you whether a project is starting or ending. Generally, in cross-team projects, effort tends to be highest when multiple teams are contributing simultaneously, and towards the end, most teams have already moved on to other projects.

Focus summary options

Filtering the view

The primary filters in the focus summary are team and timeframe. You can also narrow down the view using all standard issue filters available in Swarmia - you can find most of them under "More filters…"

Grouping by initiative

By default, issues are grouped by the highest level in your issue hierarchy. Alternatively, you can group work by Swarmia initiatives.

Important note about initiatives: Swarmia initiatives are not mutually exclusive; a single issue can belong to multiple initiatives, depending on how they have been defined. This means the total focus percentages in the view may add up to more than 100%.

Showing unlinked pull requests

By default, unlinked pull requests are hidden from the focus summary. To see how much focus is dedicated to unlinked PRs, toggle them on under "More filters…"