Contents

Prerequisites

Ensure that you are good on the following prerequisites:

• Jira Agile is installed
• The Story Points field is available
• If you want to build a report using time metric, make sure that time tracking is enabled
• Release Prediction Chart is added to your dashboard
• You have configured the Release Prediction Chart
  
  
  

Reading data on the chart

Your Release Prediction Chart displays the following information:

• Sprint related data
  • sprint estimates - The estimated progression of the project
  • sprint actuals - The actual progression of the project
  • planned sprint - this line shows how work on the future planned sprints is going to be delivered based on the team's velocity and estimates for the tickets. This line is useful to sanity check your planned sprints as it helps you compare where you want to be at a certain date in the future (sprint estimates line in the future) and how the planned tickets are about to be delivered in the future. For example, you plan to finish sprint 23 on October 18, have all your tickets estimated and added to the sprint, and this workload might be more than a team can deliver within a sprint. Jira will not tell you that you won't deliver your work on time. But you can look at the planned sprint value on the chart and see that delivering tickets estimated for sprint 23 is actually going to happen not earlier than October 27 (see two screenshots below). This is a powerful insight to have both for project planning and for expectation setting.
     
  • future normal sprint - The predicted ideal progression of the sprints or how the sprints should ideally be planned based on how they have been delivered up till now
• Version related data
  • version estimates - The estimated progression of the version
  • version actuals - The actual progression of the version
  • planned version - The planned progression of the version (how the version should be planned)
• Acceptable deviation and danger zone – a user defined deviation area around the future sprint estimates. If the future sprint actuals are inside this area, the team progress is considered to be on track even if the actuals are below the estimates. 
  • Deviation (ahead) – a gold to aim for. This is the hardest line to reach on the chart but at the same time the sweetest one. Very rarely do teams reach that gold but it's worth trying! 
  • Deviation (behind) – this line marks the maximum deviation from planned work beyond which the team progress is not considered to be on track and thus - entering the danger zone.
  • Danger zone – transparent red area below the Deviation (behind) line. Whenever the sprint actuals are inside the danger zone, it means that the team's progress is far below the plan, even below the acceptable deviation. This is a serious point where you would want to sit with your team and identify a reason for this – maybe a team was distracted by work that is not planned for, maybe the plans are too ambitious for the team to deliver, and so on.
    
    

The following example shows that for several sprints the team was slow in delivering sprint work and releasing versions – sprints actuals are far below sprints estimates. The team is currently far behind schedule. In order to deliver the estimated work (403 SP) and get back to normal velocity, the team should plan 17 sprints until the projected release date(5/24/2018). Considering the deviation norm, if the team is behind schedule, the pessimistic release date should be 9/08/2018. In an optimistic scenario, if the team burns up more points per sprint than they used to and is ahead of schedule, the optimistic release date should be 2/5/2018. The team progress will be on track as long as the team will be within the deviation norm.

Selecting data to display on the chart

The chart enables you to customize your report view by showing and hiding the data depending on your current focus. For instance, if you are focused on how you should plan the sprints until release and you are not interested in the versions, you can hide the lines by clicking them in the chart legend as shown below. To display the lines again, click them again.

Tooltips

For you to have an instant insight into what the certain parts of the chart mean and how much work was delivered at a certain point in time, hover over a place on the chart. You'll see the summary in the tooltip.

Zoom feature

For a better deep dive and work analysis, you can zoom in to see an area representing a short period of time. To zoom in, hover over the chart and use the mouse wheel or your track pad. You can also pan over the chart by clicking and dragging on a section of the chart. To zoom out, you can use your mouse wheel or click the Refresh button.

Release Prediciton Chart details in tabs

In addition to chart visualization we provide detailed information, insights, and warnings in a table view below the chart.

Summary tab

In addition to sprint information that you would typically find in JIRA, you can also see stats on your team's progress:

Sprints tab

The Sprints tab contains details of the closed sprints, open sprints (current sprints) and planned sprints that are included in the report. The sprints are clickable to make the navigation faster for you. For the unplanned sprints the link displays the backlog issues.

Versions tab

The Versions tab contains details on the released and unrealeased versions that are included in the report. For each version you can see the estimates, actuals, start date, end date, and the forecasted date showing the projected date of release for the version.

Warnings tab

Warnings help you quickly identify tickets that require attention.

We generate warnings when an issue is not estimated and thus might affect the chart's accuracy or when a ticket is resolved outside of the sprint and is not marked as a duplicate or clone. Such tickets are not included into the chart calculations, therefore to ensure the chart's accuracy, you might want to triage such tickets first.

We also generate warnings for the sprints and versions that are at risk of not being delivered on time.

Exporting the Release Prediction Chart data

You can save the chart image, and to do that – right click on the chart area and select Save image. 
You can also export the statistics and the sprints details into the XLS file by clicking the Export button.

Other tips and tricks

For you to have a meaningful data on the Release Prediction Chart check on the following items:

• You have at least 2 completed sprints on the SCRUM board
• You check the Warnings tab from time to time and triage tickets from there. The tickets shown in the Warnings tab are not included into the chart calculations, and thus in order to see the accurate picture on the chart, you might want to triage those tickets first.

See also

RPC - Configuring Release Prediction Chart