Add target start and target due dates

Target due dates are generally added to issues along with target start dates to set up baselines for you and your team to track your work over time. For example, they can be added to issues in your plan during the early stages of creating a plan when you may have an idea of the tasks that must be completed, and when these tasks should be completed by.

Adding target dates is helpful when planning work for your team. When you're at the start of planning work, you may have an idea of the tasks that must be completed, and when these tasks should be completed. Most of the time, you won't have more information beyond that. In such cases, using target dates — specifically target start dates and target due dates — helps you set high-level targets for the work you're planning.

With target dates, you can:

• Quickly visualize long-term plans.
• Compare the target dates that you set for your work against your calculated plan.
• Edit your current plan against the originally planned schedule, as you track your plan over time.
• Define high-level estimates on issues — as you break down issues, you can compare your original high-level estimates against broken down estimates that are more defined.

How to draft your issues based on target dates

Drafting will allow you to visualize your long-term plan using target dates. Sometimes, you have an idea of the tasks that must be completed and by when they should be finished. You don't have more information than that. In those cases, you can use the target dates to define the targets.

You can define rough time frames for each issue by adding target start and end dates to the work items.

1. To see the target dates columns in the scope table,  you need to click  on the top right-hand side of the Scope section, and select the fields target start date and target due date from the dropdown list. This action will allow the target start date and target due date columns to be shown in the scope table.
2. Create the work items that need to to be done.
3. Set the targets.
4. Go to the Schedule settings and select Target schedule from the drop-down menu.
   
   

5. Select Calculate.
   
   Example: Now you can see the issues  PERF-5 New design, PERF-6 Runtime/backend profiling and optimization, and PERF-8 Fronted optimization marked with a light blue color in the Timeline. The target dates are displayed with a blue line. See the issue name by hovering over and highlight the issue by clicking it.
   
   
   
   

   How unestimated issues are displayed

   Unestimated issues will show up on the schedule if they have both target start and end set, or if they have a manual version or sprint assignment, and the schedule unestimated items option is turned on.

   If you turn the unestimated issue scheduling option off, the target schedule view will still show unestimated issues that have both start and end date defined with the following color.