In this section, we cover analytics tools to increase your team’s visibility, optimize workload management, and make data-driven decisions.

Cycles⁠

Cycles are time-boxed periods in which a team works toward completing a defined set of issues.

The cycle graph tracks four metrics:

1. Total scope (gray line)
2. Issues started (yellow line)
3. Issues completed (solid blue line)
4. Target completion rate (dotted blue line)

If your completed line tracks above the dotted target, you’re on pace to finish everything in the current cycle!

It’s important to note that cycles are informed by issue estimates, which represent the amount of effort or complexity required to resolve an issue. You may want to document standards for how your team sets issue estimates and when, most likely during triage.

Cycles are not mapped onto feature launches or project completion, so instead use them to:

• Set realistic scope for your current and upcoming cycles based on historical data. Then, prioritize work for the current cycle and roll lower priority work to future cycles.
• Track scope over time to maintain or increase momentum, depending on your team’s goals

Project progress graphs⁠

Project progress graphs can be found in the collapsible sidebar in any project. They show a project’s due date, estimated completion date, and progress over time.

Keep an eye on the gray line (representing project scope) to flag scope creep. You’ll know that new work is being added faster than it’s being resolved when the gap between scope (gray) and completion (solid blue) widens.

Insights⁠

Insights give you a detailed view of any set of issues in your workspace. Use them to answer questions about team resources and allocation.

For example, starting from a custom view and filtering for issues with a Bug label, you can use the insights panel to:

• Break down open bug counts by priority, then address your most urgent bugs accordingly
• Chart week-over-week bug volume by status type to see how effectively your team is working through its backlog

When you land on a particularly useful insight, save it to a Dashboard.

Ask Linear, “What trends are we seeing across bug reports this week?”

Dashboards⁠

Linear dashboards let you combine data from different insights into a single page view.

Create dashboards to:

• Track bug and cycle performance
• Understand how resources are distributed across your organization
• Monitor request volume and response times on both internal and external requests

As you create dashboards, keep these best practices in mind.