Linear <> Span Integration

Last updated: February 3, 2026

The Span + Linear integration brings your project data into Span, giving you a clear view of how planned work moves through development. By connecting your Linear workspace, you can see how issues, projects, and milestones translate into code activity and delivery outcomes. This unified view helps teams spot bottlenecks, track progress against plans, and measure real engineering impact.

Once connected, you can:

  • Track high-priority delivery. Verify that urgent or customer-critical issues in Linear turn into pull requests and merges within expected timeframes.

  • Compare plans to execution. Overlay Linear project milestones with actual PR activity to spot delays, scope changes, or last-minute delivery spikes.

  • Measure issue-to-code cycle time. See how long it takes work to move from issue creation in Linear to code merged in production.

  • Quantify investment by initiative. Group Linear issues by roadmap theme and see where engineering time and effort are really going.

Together, Span and Linear help you close the loop between planning and delivery.

How it works

The Linear integration connects your Linear workspace to Span and syncs project and issue data into Span’s developer intelligence platform. This connection allows you to see how initiatives, projects, milestones, and issues move through your development lifecycle and how they relate to engineering activity.

Configure

Administrators set up the integration by adding a Linear API key in Span’s settings. Once authenticated, it verifies access to your Linear organization and begins syncing five data streams: initiatives, issues, projects, milestones, and users. The data is made available alongside other sources such as GitHub and calendar data for cross-platform analytics.

Data Synced from Linear

When you connect Linear, Span syncs:

  • Issues (with priority-based syncing)

  • Projects

  • Project Milestones

  • Initiatives

  • Team Users

All data is synced incrementally with historical tracking to capture changes over time.

Reports & Metrics Unlocked

Issue Performance Metrics

Once Linear is connected, you can measure:

  • Issue Cycle Time - Time from start to completion (with percentile analysis)

  • Issue Lifetime - Total time from creation to completion

  • Total Issues Completed - Volume of completed work

  • Total Open Issues - Current backlog size

Issue Type Handling

Linear issues are treated as a single "Task" type (Linear doesn't distinguish between stories, bugs, subtasks like Jira does).

Known Limitations

  • Issue SLA metrics are NOT available - SLA tracking requires Jira-specific features

  • Issue subtype metrics (like "Done Stories" or "Done Bugs") are not available since Linear uses a single issue type