Once you’ve added your historical data and found the epics or versions to forecast against, now you need to configure the forecast parameters. This document covers the following information to help:

Parameter Box Views

The parameters that are available to set depend on if you have toggled on the ability to see epics or versions that haven’t yet started.

Show not started toggled off

Show not started toggled on

Other Forecast Parameters

Confidence level

A forecast certainty is a reflection of your ability to absorb risk in your forecast. The Monte Carlo Simulations that we use to forecast run thousands of simulated trials using the data you configured in the Portfolio Forecaster.

This allows us to see all possible completion dates and how often each completion date happened. This allows us to make a probabilistic forecast containing a probability (85%) and a range (by the forecasted date or earlier).

A probabilistic forecast: There is an 85% chance that Item X will finish on or before Y date.

This means there’s a 15% chance it won’t. You adjust the forecast certainty according to the risk you’re willing to take.

Please note

You can never be 100% certain. The only things you can be 100% certain about are the things that have already happened.
The higher you make your certainty, the more padding your forecasts will have for many items because it is accounting for more less likely possibilities. So, if you go too high you might as well just look at how long it took to do the longest-running item as use that as a forecast for any given epic.

Concurrent items

This advanced parameter lets you tell the simulation to spend a certain percentage of your daily effort (Throughput) on items not yet in progress.

Advanced > Work ahead