Read the rest of our Advanced Pllaning (formerly Advanced Roadmaps) series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (you're here!)
In the third article of our Advanced Planning series, we will dive in to how to strategize with Advanced Planning by using its Capacity Planning features. In our previous article, we focused on the importance of a good information structure. Once you have built a good information structure, you can accurately plan capacity for your team and make adjustments quickly as business needs change.
How Capacity Planning Works
Advanced Planning can help you plan your work accordingly over time and you'll see your tasks reflected in the path you build. The tool allows teams to measure capacity based on the estimation metric that suits the team best. You can measure capacity in story points, hours, or time remaining.
Once you select the estimation metric, you can set team velocity within Advanced Planning. Velocity will be important when determining how much work your team can complete and can help determine if you need more resources. Velocity can be tracked in Jira. You can incorporate this velocity directly into the plan or you can incorporate a velocity that you have determined. Velocity within a plan is adjustable at any point and can be set for a single team or multiple teams if the plan includes work across teams. Having a strong understanding of team velocity is critical when assigning work and committing to timelines and expectations. Jira's native reports are great tools to help understand team performance.
Once velocities have been determined, you can gauge how many work items you can complete within a time frame. As you assign work out within the plan, you will see the estimation metric accumulating in the plan, allowing you to determine the remaining work items that can be assigned out to the team. Advanced Planning will let you know if you assigned too much work to a team. If that is the case, the work can be assigned to another team or moved to a later time.
Auto-scheduling
When you have to manage a ton of work it may be difficult to allocate assignments and make commitments. Through the auto-scheduling feature, Advanced Planning can help schedule work accordingly and quickly. Advanced Planning will use the velocity estimate that you established in the plan and determine where the work fits best into the plan. This is an effective feature, especially when you have to make quick adjustments, work with large quantities of Jira issues, and plan work for the long term.
It is imperative that an accurate velocity is given in the plan. A more accurate estimate of velocity will result in more accurate scheduling. Setting inaccurate velocities can set unrealistic work expectations.
Read the rest of our Advanced Planning series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (you're here!)
