Project Forecasting Features
Pulse Live Sprint Tracker
What is Pulse?
Pulse provides a glance at every piece of moving work in your organization and an interface for retroactively analyzing previous sprints.
Why should you use Pulse?
Accurate project forecasting requires regular retrospectives to identify weaknesses and inefficiencies in your software delivery lifecycle. Most productivity and efficiency metrics are trailing indicators, and it’s crucial to have a real-time tool that enables you to spot inefficiencies. Pulse provides real-time visibility for work in progress and burnout risk, two primary components of the SPACE framework.
How do you use Pulse?
- Use daily check-ins to identify overworked developers and respond to potential burnout risks. Find colleagues with available capacity to reallocate effort where it's needed most quickly.
- Conduct regular sprint reviews where you dive deep into unplanned and uncompleted work to identify opportunities for improvement.
- Monitor your planning and capacity accuracy over the long term to ensure you’re consistently forecasting project delivery.
Delivery Forecasting
What is delivery forecasting?
Delivery forecasting is your ability to deliver software and identify risks to project delivery timelines predictably.
Why should you use delivery forecasting?
Delivery forecasting enables you to identify problems in scoping iterations and executing on priorities to ensure effective project management. This capability helps pinpoint opportunities for additional work and ensure leaders have enough resources to meet goals and deadlines.
Delivery forecasting also helps prevent overcommitment and under-delivery by providing a clear view of project progress and potential challenges. A well-equipped forecasting tool facilitates better communication of expectations with the rest of the business to align stakeholders and foster a collaborative work environment.
How do you use delivery forecasting?
- Combine git and project management data to build a complete picture of planned, incomplete, unplanned, and completed work. Use formulas like Monte Carlo to forecast expected delivery dates and investigate projects at risk of missing their target.
- Use daily check-ins to identify stalled work or work assigned to overworked teams to minimize risks to delivery timelines. Investigate projects or teams needing help with accurate planning or capacity estimation to see if their difficulties are related to project scoping or unplanned work.
- Balance investment in innovation against upkeep and maintenance to minimize unplanned work. Long-term underinvestment in keeping the lights on increases the likelihood of unplanned work that will disrupt your delivery timelines.
Additional Resources
Project Delivery Tracker
What is the project delivery tracker?
The project delivery tracker is a dashboard that helps you monitor progress toward project completion and forecast completion dates to deliver software more predictably.
Why should you use the project delivery tracker?
Reliably shipping software on expected dates is one of the most valuable things an engineering organization can do for a company. Your marketing, sales, and customer success organizations plan and schedule campaigns and customer outreach around product launch dates. If engineering misses deadlines, the impact resonates throughout the entire company.
Accurate project delivery tracking enables you to keep engineering efforts efficiently aligned with business strategies and deliver value against what your customers need.
How do you use the project delivery tracker?
- Combine git and project management data to build a complete picture of completed, ongoing, and finished tasks. Monitor unplanned and incomplete work to minimize timeline disruptions.
- Use weekly check-ins to ensure that engineering directs efforts toward projects supporting strategic business initiatives. Investigate projects that are falling behind to identify bottlenecks and other sources of inefficiencies. Identify projects that are ahead of schedule to source additional resources and reallocate them as necessary.
- Maximize planning and capacity accuracy to predictable delivery software according to promised timelines. If you’re experiencing poor planning or capacity accuracy, look for opportunities to improve task scoping and give your development teams the space to respond to shifting business priorities.
Planning Accuracy
What is planning accuracy?
Planning accuracy is the ratio between planned tasks and how many your team completes. This metric measures how well your teams prioritize and execute planned work.
Why should you monitor planning accuracy?
Planning accuracy is a good measure of how well your team's scope work and how well they execute their priorities. Inconsistent planning hurts engineering culture because developers who know what any given day looks like can more easily set achievable goals and reach their objectives.
Further, the effects of poor planning accuracy extends to everyone else at the company who needs to plan their initiatives around engineering release dates. Marketing cannot effectively drive awareness and may have to delay planned campaigns, events, or content. Sales will lose reputation with prospective customers if they can’t confidently promise features on the product roadmap. Lastly, customer success will be in constant limbo as they attempt to keep customers engaged with the upcoming product roadmap.
How do you improve planning accuracy?
- Establish an engineering metrics program to track engineering stability, velocity, and risk; these are the critical factors in determining your planning predictability. Start with metrics like cycle time, change failure rate, mean time to restore, PR size, and rework rate to identify the most significant gaps.
- Monitor unplanned work to ensure your teams aren’t bogged down by unexpected effort. Additionally, monitor work-in-progress to identify teams or individuals experiencing consistently high rates of work or a sudden surge in activity. Both of these metrics are leading indicators of predictability.
- Combine planning accuracy with capacity accuracy to identify problems with task scoping, project execution, scope creep, and overwork.
High Capacity Accuracy
(85% - 115%)
Low Capacity Accuracy
(<80%)
High Planning Accuracy
(75% - 96%)
- Your project and/or team is doing extremely well! Keep it up!
- If other projects are not trending so well, consider moving some resources around
- Your team scoped the iteration well, but they aren’t necessarily responding to normal changes and fluctuations
- Work on adapting to the needs and priorities of the business
Low Planning Accuracy
(<70%)
- Execution is good, but you’re focusing on the wrong things
- Scope creep and unplanned work is taking up too much time
- Talk to PM about added work and prioritize your planned work
- You’re taking on too much work – splitting focus and increasing delay risks
- You need to scope down and focus on your planned work
- Would be a good time to inquire about additional resources if possible
What is good planning accuracy?
Elite
> 85%
Good
85% - 60%
Fair
60% - 40%
Needs Focus
< 40%
Capacity Accuracy
What is capacity accuracy?
Capacity Accuracy measures all completed work as a ratio of planned work.
Why should you monitor capacity accuracy?
Capacity accuracy helps software engineering leaders evaluate how effectively they scope iterations and execute priorities. Monitoring capacity accuracy is one way to ensure that planned work aligns with available resources. By identifying discrepancies between estimated and actual capacity, managers can pinpoint potential bottlenecks and understand their root causes, whether they stem from unrealistic estimations, unexpected challenges, or inefficiencies. This awareness allows managers to assess if additional resources are needed to handle both planned tasks and the inevitable unplanned work that arises.
Capacity accuracy also illuminates the team's flexibility in adjusting priorities and accommodating changes in scope, which is essential for maintaining productivity and meeting deadlines. Analyzing patterns and trends across iterations enables managers to anticipate issues that could impact feature delivery, ensuring proactive measures are taken. Lastly, by recognizing overburdened teams managing unforeseen work, managers can engage in necessary discussions with stakeholders to adjust expectations and workloads, fostering a healthier and more sustainable working environment.
How do you improve capacity accuracy?
- Establish an engineering metrics program to track engineering stability, velocity, and risk; these are the critical factors in determining your capacity predictability. Start with metrics like cycle time, change failure rate, mean time to restore, PR size, and rework rate to identify the most significant gaps..
- Monitor work in progress and work overload to identify teams and individuals experiencing consistently high work rates or a sudden surge in activity. Ensure these teams have the resources and availability to respond to shifting business priorities.
- Combine capacity accuracy with planning accuracy to identify problems with task scoping, project execution, scope creep, and overwork.
High Capacity Accuracy
(85% - 115%)
Low Capacity Accuracy
(<80%)
High Planning Accuracy
(75% - 96%)
- Your project and/or team is doing extremely well! Keep it up!
- If other projects are not trending so well, consider moving some resources around
- Your team scoped the iteration well, but they aren’t necessarily responding to normal changes and fluctuations
- Work on adapting to the needs and priorities of the business
Low Planning Accuracy
(<70%)
- Execution is good, but you’re focusing on the wrong things
- Scope creep and unplanned work is taking up too much time
- Talk to PM about added work and prioritize your planned work
- You’re taking on too much work – splitting focus and increasing delay risks
- You need to scope down and focus on your planned work
- Would be a good time to inquire about additional resources if possible
What is good capacity accuracy?
Elite
85% - 115%
Ideal Range
Good
Above 130%
Under Commit
Fair
116% - 130%
Potential Under Commit
Needs Focus
70% - 84%
Potential Over Commit
Now is the time to begin your journey
Change the way your team delivers software.