Scheduling unestimated items
This page discusses the usage of Portfolio for Jira live plans (any version from 2.0 to 2.27). If you're using the redesigned planning interface, see this page instead.
The automatic scheduling mechanism in Portfolio for Jira is one of its core capabilities, and it provides a better way for you to optimize and allocate resources realistically.
A plan schedule in Portfolio for Jira may display work items in either dark blue or light blue background:
- Dark blue work items are estimated, and are thus scheduled by the automatic scheduling mechanism in Portfolio for Jira
- Light blue work items are unestimated, but are scheduled because these have either a sprint, a release, or targets dates assigned to them
- Light blue bars on work items indicate dependencies between work items in the backlog:
if the light blue bar is at the beginning of an issue, that issue is dependent on another issue
- if the light blue bar is at the end of an issue, that issue is a dependency for another issue
For unestimated light blue work items that have been scheduled...
- If the plan is using a project or JQL as an issue source, sprint data will not be added to the plan.
- If the plan is using a Scrum board as an issue source, sprint data will be added to the plan if the board is assigned to the team in the plan.
Long-term work usually has a higher level of uncertainty, and there may be times when work items in your plan are still unestimated. This can be due to a variety of reasons – perhaps at the time of planning, there aren't enough known factors yet, for you to assign accurate estimates to these work items. However, for the sake of preparing and communicating your roadmap to stakeholders, you may still need to push forward and schedule these unestimated items
Unestimated work items don't actually get scheduled in Portfolio for Jira. But if these items have manually assigned sprints or releases, Portfolio for Jira will display these items in light blue shade in the schedule. The visibility of unestimated items is limited to the information provided for the work items:
- The length of the unestimated items come either from the release duration or the sprint duration. If you have both set, the sprint length takes priority over the release duration.
- The Schedule range filter will filter unestimated items out, and you won't be able to see them.
- Even if you have a fix release assignment, the item won't show up if the release doesn't have a duration or fixed end date.
By scheduling unestimated items using one of the following options, Portfolio for Jira can produce a more sensible schedule, even if you're just doing high-level planning of your work:
Base on default estimates
Portfolio for Jira will schedule unestimated work items based on the default estimates that you configure for each hierarchy level.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more (
) next to the plan name > Configure > Scheduling. - In the Unestimated item scheduling section, select Base on default estimates.
- Set the default estimate for each hierarchy level.
The default estimates will be applied to the unestimated issues in the plan, if the respective hierarchy level is defined in the plan's planning unit.
Note the following details:
- The default estimate applies only to unestimated issues in your plan.
- You can define independent default estimates for time-based or story point-based.
- When switching the planning unit from story points to time-based, the default estimate will be switched.
- If there is a parent with children, and one child has an estimate, the parent won't get default estimate because it will take the child aggregated estimates and therefore, it is not considered unestimated.
- If the children have no estimate, the parent will receive the default estimate.
- When you import issues that are mapped to the defined hierarchy levels, those issues will take the configured default estimate — unless there is already a defined estimate.
Base on target dates
Portfolio for Jira will schedule unestimated work items to last the duration of their assigned sprint, release, or target date.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scheduling.
- In the Unestimated item scheduling section, select Base on target dates.
Click Calculate.
For example...
Let's say have the MEX-16 Horizon expansion epic, which contains several stories, and none of these stories are estimated.
You'll need to assign MEX-16 Horizon expansion epic to a release that has a fixed end date. Then, when you click Calculate, the epic will be shown in the timeline as unestimated issues having the duration of that release.
Custom
Portfolio for Jira will use the custom dates that you set, as the start and end dates of unestimated items in your plan. These custom dates come from the custom fields that are configured in your plan.
- Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.
- Click more () next to the plan name > Configure > Scheduling.
- In the Unestimated item scheduling section, select Custom.
If you don't set any custom dates, then the start and end dates of the unestimated items will take the default values of target start and target end dates, correspondingly.
Off
By choosing not to schedule unestimated items, Portfolio for Jira will ignore any unestimated items in your plan. These items will not have any impact on the schedule as well.