This article walks through the following information about the Portfolio Forecaster (Beta)
What happens when you load the page
When you access Portfolio Forecaster for Jira from a particular project for the first time, it will make some default selections for Epics / Versions and your Historical Data based on the project you are in and begin calculating your forecast.
Default Epics / Version selection: Default selection is all unfinished Versions or Epics (those that haven’t started yet or are in progress) within the current project.
Default Historical data selection: Default selection are all Jira issues (excluding Epics or subtasks) finished within the current project in the last 90 days
Configurations are saved per user per project. This means that in any one project, every user can have their own forecast configured. And every user can have a separate forecast configured in each project. Keep reading about how to change your configurations!
Choose which specific items to forecast
We’re using images from the epics forecasting in this document, but the instructions are the same for both epics and versions.
To configure the fetching of the data to load - simply click on the “Change” link in the Epics Selection or Version Selection box.
You will then see the project selection dialog where you can either add or remove projects that will be used to fetch the versions or epics to forecast against.
You can now filter your epics by any available field.
As you add or remove projects from the list of projects you will see a quick preview of the number of items found just below the dropdown:
For epics, it tells how many epics it found in a Jira workflow state having a status category other than COMPLETE.
For versions, it tells how many versions it found that haven’t been released.
Choose the historical data used for forecasting
In order to forecast, the Portfolio Forecaster for Jira needs to have at least 10 historical items to put through our Monte Carlo simulation. By historical items we mean finished Jira issues (those who are in a workflow state with a status category of complete.)
Default settings look for all issues (excluding epics and subtasks) that were finished in the project in the last 60 days. To change the historical data used in the simulation, click the Change link in the Historical Data box.
You will then see the historical data configuration dialog:
A) Here you can add or remove projects that contain the historical data you want to use.
B) Use this field to tell the app how far back to grab historical data in days.
C) Here is where you refine your search to pull only the data that you feel would be representative of the work you’re trying to forecast. You refine by searching for an issue field to filter on and then choose how you want to use that field to refine the data.
If an issue doesn’t match all of the field filters, it won’t be used to make the forecast.
D) This is where you see the field filters you’ve added and you can edit or delete them using the appropriate icon.
E) As you edit and adjust the configuration you will see the number of issues update here.
Remember, you must have at least 10 items to run the forecast.
Common questions
Why are my Epics not showing as In Progress?
In your Jira workflow, each workflow status is assigned a status category: ‘To Do', ‘In Progress' or ‘Done'. For every Epic we check it’s current workflow status and its status category to determine if the Epic is not yet started, in progress, or completed. If you want Epics to appear as IN PROGRESS, make sure you have transitioned them to an In Progress workflow status.
We don’t assume that just because an issue in the Epic is In Progress, that you want to consider the entire Epic as In Progress as there are some use cases where that wouldn’t be accurate. We prefer to have you be explicit about this.
Want your Epics to automatically move to an In Progress workflow status when you start an issue inside your Epic? Jira has automation features that make this possible.
Why are some of my Epics or Versions not showing up in my forecast?
Only Epics or Versions with unresolved work attached to them can be forecasted. The forecast table will show all Epics or Versions with remaining unresolved Jira issues and will tell you how many were filtered out due to 0 work items remaining.
Why isn’t my field visible for filtering Epics/Versions or Historical Data?
Not all fields are available to us for filtering via the user interface. If your field isn’t showing up, put in a request via our support portal.
Next Step
Once you’ve configured your data, it is time to choose a forecast certainty.