Looking at the actual execution plan is one of the most used performance troubleshooting techniques. Having information on elapsed CPU time and overall execution time, together with session wait information in an actual execution plan allows a DBA to use showplan to troubleshoot issues away from the server, and be able to correlate and compare different types of waits that result from query or schema changes.
A few months ago we had introduced exposed in SSMS some of the per-operator statistics, such as CPU and elapsed time per thread. More recently, we have introduced overall query CPU and elapsed time tracking for statistics showplan xml (both in ms). These can be found in the root node of an actual plan. Available using the latest versions of SSMS v17, when used with SQL Server 2012 SP4, SQL Server 2016 SP1 and SQL Server 2017. For SQL Server 2014 it will become available in a future Service Pack.
Also be sure to check out Geoff Patterson’s Connect item asking that the execution plan results show the top ten waits in descending order rather than ascending order. That’s the appropriate ordering in my mind: show me the most important things first.