Issue Age at Backlog Entry During Spikes(3.2.8)

When a large number of issues enters the backlog on the same day, the age of those issues at the moment of entry tells you whether this is genuine new demand or a backlog housekeeping dump. A batch of same-day issues means real new work arrived. A batch of 60-day-old issues appearing in the backlog means someone just decided to triage a pile of things they'd been sitting on.

Both are valid in context, but they require very different responses from a planning perspective.

What you can conclude

• A spike dominated by same-day issues (age 0) is a genuine demand surge — capacity planning may need to respond.
• A spike dominated by older issues suggests a delayed triage event — the work is not actually new, just newly visible.
• A mix of ages indicates a combined event — some new demand plus some backlog housekeeping happening simultaneously.

How this chart works

Histogram showing issue age in days at the moment of backlog entry, grouped across all spike events. Buckets: same-day, 1–7 days, 8–30 days, 31–90 days, 90+ days.

The day in progress is shown at its count so far. Because the day is not yet complete, it is not compared against the rolling baseline and is not evaluated for a spike.

This histogram covers the same spike days the control chart marks and the alert log lists, so it inherits the same precondition: a day is only evaluated once at least six observed days sit behind it. The first days of a project contribute no bars here, because no baseline has been established for them yet. When no day in the selected range has a baseline yet, the panel shows "Collecting data" with the days of history so far instead of an empty chart.