How come my Release Burndown throws error message "No forecast available yet"

Question

I created a release in Jira for an upcoming release and then I clicked on the Release Burndown report to see the predicted sprints remaining. When I do, I receive an error message below. I have more than 3 sprints already completed in this release. Any idea on why this is happening?

No forecast available yet

A forecast cannot be shown until at least 3 sprints have been completed.

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Danut M _StonikByte_ · Answer

Hi @Dawn Rodney

try our Great Gadgets app for Jira & Confluence. It offers a Release Burndown Burnup chart that can generate forecast based on current team progress/velocity.

The app offers many other useful gadgets, for agile especially.

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut.

Petter Gonçalves · Answer

Hello @Dawn Rodney

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Per your description, I believe your release Burndown report is not displaying your closed Sprints because the issues from the missing Sprints were added Before the initial sprint section of the report. This article will explain it better:

Basically, when a release is established, the first issue created in the first sprint associated with the version will establish the baseline of the initial sprint. This cannot be changed or modified. The moment an issue from a Sprint is added to a version, that moment decides the starting point for the report. All the issues from earlier Sprints that get added to the version, will be added to the Before initial sprint section.

The reason this behaviour occurs is that first and foremost, Agile is a planning tool. Making changes retroactively to a version like this after the issue and sprint are already Done will skew your reporting and the application is not built in a way which would accommodate otherwise. This is why the issue is being considered as part of the Original estimate, as the work done on the issue was not done during the Version itself.

P.S: This is not a bug, but at the same time, JIRA will not be able to handle this behaviour the way it might be expected to.

Reference: Some Completed Sprints are not visible in the "Release Burndown" report

Can you please confirm if this is the scenario you are facing? If that's the case, It is unfortunately not possible to change the report now, as it represents a snapshot of a point in time. However, the only way to prevent this from happening is to not add already closed issues to a version at a later point in time.

Please, let me know if it makes sense or you still have any questions.