Scheduling

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You can configure the scheduling settings of a plan to reflect the way your teams work. For example, you may be planning work for Scrum and Kanban teams across multiple projects. Since Kanban teams use time-based estimates, then you'd benefit from choosing either days or hours as the estimation unit in your plan.

The following scheduling settings are available:

Sample scheduling settings in a plan

Estimation

You can choose which unit to use when estimating issues in your plan.

UnitWhen to use
Days
  • Available for plans that use Scrum boards and Kanban boards as issue sources.
  • Ideal for Scrum and Kanban teams that use time-based estimates for their work.


Hours
Story points
  • Only available when all the issue sources of the plan are Scrum boards.
  • Once a Kanban board is associated to a plan, story points are no longer available to use.
  • Ideal for Scrum teams that use story point estimates for their work.
  • If you're planning work for Scrum teams, we recommend to use story points when estimating the issues in your plan.

The estimation unit that you choose for your plan impacts the types of teams that you can create in your plan.

  • If you're using days or hours (time-based estimation), you can create both Scrum and Kanban teams in your plan.
    • For Scrum and Kanban teams, the default capacity is set to 200 weekly hours.
    • For Scrum teams, the default iteration length is set to 2 weeks.
  • If you're using story points, you can only create Scrum teams in your plan. The default team velocity is set to 30 story points, and the default iteration length is set to 2 weeks.

See Creating teams for more details.

Sprint dates

By default, target start and target end dates are used when scheduling and auto-scheduling issues in a plan. If an issue doesn't have target dates, and the issue has a sprint value, Portfolio can use the sprint start and end dates as target dates for the issue. These dates will be displayed in the target start and target end columns of the issue, with the sprint lozenge (). The issue will also have a schedule bar in the timeline, based on the start and end dates of the sprint.

Sample plan settings with sprint visibility enabled

Sample issues using sprint dates

To use sprint dates for issues without dates:

  1. In your plan, click settings () > Configure > Scheduling.
  2. In the sprint visibility section, select the Use sprint dates when date fields aren't set checkbox.

If you prefer not to use sprint dates for issues that don't have any dates yet, clear the Use sprint dates when date fields aren't set checkbox. Consequently, there won't be any schedule bars for these issues in the timeline section. 

Dependencies

When planning work, it's inevitable that some issues will have dependencies; either an issue is blocking the progress of another issue, or an issue is blocked by another issue.

In Portfolio for Jira, dependencies are defined as:

  • Incoming: If ADR-19 is blocked by PLAT-5, then ADR-19 has an incoming dependency.
  • Outgoing: If PLAT-1 blocks IOS-20, then PLAT-1 has an outgoing dependency.

You can choose how dependent issues should be scheduled in each plan.

  1. In your plan, click settings () > Configure > Scheduling.
  2. In the dependencies section, choose one of the following options:
    • Sequential: Dependent issues cannot be worked on at the same time, whether the issues are manually scheduled or auto-scheduled.
    • Concurrent: Dependent issues can be worked on at the same time, whether the issues are manually scheduled or auto-scheduled.
Last modified on Oct 8, 2019

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