v1.0 - Configure the data
- Julia Wester
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 load data from the current project using some default configurations:
Default Epics / Version selection:
Unfinished Versions or Epics (those that haven’t started yet or are in progress) within the current project.
Default Historical data selection:
Issue types (excluding Epics or subtasks) within the current project that have finished in the last 90 days
Any changes you make to your configurations will be saved for your user and used the next time you load Portfolio Forecaster from that project.
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.
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.
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.
This number is for all items found but only items with unresolved work in them can be forecasted. The forecast table will show all items with remaining unresolved Jira issues and will tell you how many were filtered out due to 0 work items remaining.
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.
Common questions
Why isn’t my field visible?
Not all fields are available to us for filtering via the user interface. If your field isn’t showing up - contact our support team at support@55degrees.se and they can raise an enhancement request.
Next Step
Once you’ve configured your data, it is time to choose a forecast certainty.