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Your team is at 95% utilization, and you still can't answer the question your director asked: how much of that went to the new product, and how much to keeping the old one alive? A utilization percentage says the team is busy. It doesn't say busy with what.
A team utilization chart in our Jira reporting answers that. It splits the team's hours into slices by project, epic or any Jira field, so you can see that 60% of last month went to maintenance before you promise the roadmap another quarter. Below is how to build one in ActivityTimeline, what it shows for past and future periods, and where it stops being useful.
The High Cost of Flying Blind
When you can't easily see your team's workload distribution, every decision is a gamble. You might approve a new project thinking you have the capacity, only to discover your most critical team member is already spending 60% of their actual hours on maintenance tasks. This is how scope creep happens, how burnout becomes inevitable, and how even the best project managers end up missing deadlines.
Standard utilization reports often fail to provide the context you need. They might tell you if your team is busy, but not what they are busy with. This lack of insight makes it impossible to improve resource utilization or have meaningful conversations about priorities.
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What is a team utilization chart?
A team utilization chart is a pie chart of one team's time over a period, split by project, epic or another Jira field. Each slice shows hours and a percentage of the total. In ActivityTimeline it's called the Team Utilization Pie Chart, and it can use logged time for a past period or planned work for a future one.
How to create a team utilization chart in ActivityTimeline
- Open Reports and choose Team Utilization Pie Chart.
- Set Reporting Scope: past (worklogs) or future (estimates and bookings).
- Pick the Period, for example last month or the next 10 weeks.
- In Report By, keep all scheduled work, or choose Jira Filter and pick a saved filter to limit the data.
- Choose the team or people.
- In Group By, choose Project, Epic or a Jira custom field, and click Create.
After it's built, the settings button at the top right lets you change the team, the period or the filter, switch Jira issues, bookings or placeholders on and off, and show percentage.
Can the chart show past and future utilization?
Yes. The Reporting Scope of our utilization report decides which data goes in:
- Analyze the Past (Worklogs): By selecting "Worklogs" as your data source, the report analyzes historical time tracking data. It pulls all logged time, bookings, and imported calendar events to show you exactly how your team's actual hours were spent during a completed period. This is perfect for sprint retrospectives and performance reviews.
- Forecast the Future (Estimates): Switch the scope to "Estimates," and the chart transforms into a forecasting tool. It uses the remaining estimates on Jira issues, future bookings, and placeholders to predict how your team's time will be allocated in an upcoming period. This allows you to spot potential resource conflicts long before they happen.
The future view is the one that saves you trouble. If next quarter's chart shows 45% on a project the business called low priority, you can change the plan now instead of explaining it in three months.
How to group the chart by project, epic or custom field
Project is the default grouping and answers "which projects take our time". Epic shows larger initiatives across projects. Jira custom fields (available since version 10.2) let you group by anything your team tracks, for example Issue Type, to see whether time goes to bugs, improvements or new features.
To narrow the data first, use a Jira filter in Report By, for example only issues with the labelclient-a
Jira pie chart gadget vs ActivityTimeline utilization reports
The Jira gadget is fine when issue counts are what you need. It can't tell you that 12 small bugs took more time than one large feature.
One honest limit: the utilization chart shows distribution, not efficiency. A team can spend 50% on the right project and still deliver half of what was planned. For that, compare planned and logged hours in the Planned vs Actual report.
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