They measure the same thing from different traditions. Resolution time is a support metric for how long tickets take to solve; MTTR is an engineering and incident metric for how long it takes to restore or fix a problem. Many teams use MTTR for escalated tickets and incidents, and resolution time for the whole queue.
How they're usually reported
- Resolution time: per ticket, often as a median and 90th percentile
- MTTR: per incident or per escalated issue, as a mean
- The R in MTTR can mean resolve, repair, recover, or respond, so define it
Which to use
Use resolution time to manage the support queue and MTTR to manage how fast engineering-dependent issues close. Breaking MTTR into acknowledge, diagnose, fix, and verify shows which stage is slow.
Resilinc saw a 62% reduction in MTTR with Decimal. See MTTR and resolution time.