Roadmap Auto Schedule - Stories don't start right away after dependency

Nesli Kalender

Hello, 

I'm creating a plan in Roadmap and want to use auto schedule to plan IT activities. 
There is dependency connection for all the stories. 

I know my team has enough capacity in the plan but somehow it doesn't start from the Monday. It pushes start date to Thursday. 
I couldn't find why it's behaving like that. 
any help would be appreciated. 

Mary from Planyway

Hi @Nesli Kalender 

It's Mary from Planyway for Jira: roadmapping, workload, time tracking

When you're using the auto-schedule feature in Jira's Roadmap and encountering unexpected start dates for your IT activities, it could be due to several factors. Here's a checklist of potential reasons why it's pushing the start date to Thursday instead of starting on Monday, despite having enough capacity and all dependencies connected:

1. Non-working Days Configuration: Ensure that your team's working days are correctly configured in Jira. If weekends are extended or if Monday to Wednesday are marked as non-working days (intentionally or by mistake), it would push the start to Thursday.

2. Holiday or Custom Non-working Days: Check if there are any holidays or custom non-working days set for your team within that period. Sometimes global or local holidays are added to the plan without realizing it affects the scheduling.

3. Dependency Start Dates: Even though dependencies are connected, if a preceding task is scheduled to finish by Wednesday (due to its own constraints or dependencies), the next task would naturally start on Thursday.

4. Velocity or Capacity Settings: Review your team's velocity or capacity settings. You mentioned that your team has enough capacity, but ensure that the allocation is correctly set for the entire week and is not just calculated from Thursday onwards.

5. Issue Prioritization or Ranking: In some configurations, the auto-schedule might prioritize or rank issues in a way that delays the start. This could be due to how issues are ordered in the backlog or specific settings within your roadmap planning tool.

6. Sprint Configuration: If you're planning within the context of sprints, check the sprint start dates. Sometimes, the auto-schedule aligns tasks with the next sprint's start date, which could be set to Thursday.

7. Version Release Dates: If your tasks are tied to version releases, check the configured start dates of those versions. The auto-scheduler might align tasks to match version planning constraints.

8. User-defined Constraints: Look for any user-defined constraints on issues that might force the scheduler to delay tasks. These can include specific start/end dates set on tasks that affect the overall scheduling.