Reopen Rate — the quality signal Jira hides
The percent of your Done column that doesn't stay done. Tells you whether your team is shipping work or shipping work twice.
Why Done isn't done
A ticket gets moved to Done. Two days later it comes back — reopened because the QA caught something, or the customer reported a regression, or the definition of done was looser than everyone thought. The team's velocity chart still counts the original close. The cycle-time chart looks fast. Nothing in Jira's stock reporting says 'you shipped this twice.'
Reopen rate is the cleanest leading indicator of acceptance criteria erosion. When it climbs, it climbs quietly — sprint by sprint, retroes don't notice, until quality becomes a topic at the all-hands.
How teams try to track quality today
What teams try, what doesn't quite work:
- Counting reopened bugs via Jira labels — only works if QA labels consistently, which is rare.
- Watching the in-progress column for tickets that 'reappear' — eye-driven, no record of how often it happens.
- Tracking escaped-defects by post-release bug count — too late, and conflates regressions with new defects.
- Asking QA in retro 'how was quality this sprint' — vibes-based, never compared sprint-to-sprint.
How Avium Signals computes reopen rate
Avium reads ticket status transition history (TicketTransition table). Any ticket that moves from a Done status to a non-Done status is counted as a reopen.
- Reopens this window: count of tickets reopened in the last N closed sprints (default: 6).
- Reopen rate: reopens divided by total tickets moved to Done in the same window. Reported as a percentage.
- Trend: comparing the first half of the window to the second. 'Reopen rate trending up' is the Signal that escalates the card severity.
- Per-person breakdown: who's filing the reopens (QA) vs who's the original assignee. Surfaces handoff patterns.
Who reads this Signal
See your reopen rate
Free tier surfaces reopen rate the first time you load sprint history. Trend detection across multiple sprints unlocks on Team; the AI Briefing's quality narrative ('your reopen rate has climbed 8 points over two months — here's the pattern') is on Business.
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