Velocity-Based Forecasting analyzes recent team velocity for a given milestone to project future completion dates. It’s designed to be simple and transparent — divide the remaining scope by the team’s average weekly velocity from the past few weeks to estimate weeks remaining, then count forward from today for a projected completion date.

Because it reflects real team conditions (like complexity or split focus), it often produces more realistic forecasts than overly complex models while remaining easy to verify.

Beta Notice:
This feature is currently in Beta and requires activation by your Customer Success Manager (CSM). We’re comparing generated forecasts against known milestones to assess accuracy and refine edge case handling. The model performs best with a few weeks of velocity data, and ongoing improvements are being made for limited-data situations.

If you’d like to enable Velocity-Based Forecasting for your organization, please contact your CSM.

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• The algorithm determines the Estimated Remaining Work and divides the Avg. Velocity for Assignees on that item to figure out the number of days that are probably remaining. This calculation does not include weekend days when forecasting out the number of days of remaining work.

• The algorithm pulls the per day velocity for all assignees, or the entire team, from the count or story points of all items completed in the last 90 days (from today). Individuals get a minimum velocity for outlier low velocities.

• If there is an actual start date and it’s in the future, we’ll assume work isn’t starting until that start date so we’ll add those days remaining to that start date.

• If there isn’t an actual start date, we’ll assume work is starting today and the forecast will start today.

• If there aren’t any assignees on tickets we’ll look at the team and calculate the avg. velocity for this team and assume that the team is working on this body of work.

• If assignees have outlier velocities, we exclude those. If someone has a different velocity from the rest of their team, for the purpose of calculating team’s velocity, we might assume that person is ramping up or not a full time contributor. (This is to try to sample what looks like a true representative sample of the team.)

• It won’t consider that you’re allocating a certain % of your team’s focus on a specific order.

• If there are 10 milestones on the Portfolio report, each item would be forecasted the same as if 1 item was on the report. It doesn’t take into account that it is competing against all other items for resources.

• Think of using forecasting with the mindset of “What is my team capable of completing if they focus on this effort?”

• For an effort/deliverable, set an actual target date/start date, and use forecasting to check in on how you’re progressing compared to the due date you’ve set.  Forecasting gives you a warning and allows you to address any bottlenecks before it becomes too late.