One of the most important metrics for IT and Customer Service teams that solve problems and answer customer questions is mean time to resolution, commonly referred to as MTTR. Atlassian defines MTTR as the average time it takes for an issue to reach a resolved state, as measured from the time the ticket was created. It’s an exceedingly important metric to track, especially for IT teams because it is one of the few great ways to quantify team productivity. When tracked and reported over time, it becomes possible to determine the efficacy and ROI of business process improvements. While Jira gives us an easy way to track service level agreements (aka SLAs), there is no great built-in tool for tracking MTTR (yet).

SmartGrid technology is the effective future of the electric power industry. Just consider the numbers: the US SmartGrid market is expected to double in size between 2009 and 2014, from $21.4 billion to $42.8 billion, with global SmartGrid spending exceeding $200 billion in 2015. With significant aid from federal stimulus funding, SmartGrid development and implementation has already begun across the US. Experts expect SmartGrid technology to become the electric industry standard within 20 years.

We recently heard a traffic analyst from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) speak about traffic analytics. Living in a city with the fourth-worst automobile traffic in the US, the topic was particularly engaging.