How does Allstacks generate the Forecast information under the Portfolio Report?

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How it calculates:

Base Calculation:

• 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.

Actual Start Date:

• 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.

Assignees:

• 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.)

Things to consider:

Currently, our forecasting is not aware of team capacity.

• 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.

Recommendations on how to use current forecasting:

• 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.