Predict initiative completion dates and effort with the new forecast

When you’re running a large initiative, you want to know two things: when it will be done, and how much work is left. The new forecast gives you both. It runs a Monte Carlo simulation on your team’s recent activity to estimate the most likely completion date and the remaining FTE for any in-progress issue or initiative.

Behind the scenes, it estimates the size of each remaining subtask from its past FTE data and paces the work by your team’s recent monthly pace. Along with the most likely outcome, you get optimistic (p50), likely (p80), and conservative (p90) estimates for both the date and the effort. You can adjust the monthly effort going into the work to see how it shifts the date, and for Swarmia-managed initiatives, you can turn the forecast into a target date in one click.

To get started, open an in-progress issue or initiative to see its forecast, which is based on your recent activity by default. If you want to adjust it, you can change the remaining scope and how much of your contributors’ focus goes into the work, or change the time period and contributors the simulation samples from. For initiatives, set the forecasted date as your target with one click. This replaces the previous initiative and issue forecast tool.