Version report - adding closed stories results in horrible release prediction date

Question

We created a version mid-way into a project.

We created a version in this iteration, and added stories from the previous 6 iterations or so. (ie:  batch assigned those stories to the "fix version").

The chart doesn't show the historical progress of those stories, it shows the scope increase had an explosion yesterday.

With maybe 5-6 sprints worth of stories to come (and estimated) the version chart thinks our velocity is incredible and predicts the end of our project to be in 2 days. lol.

I think this is because we added stories to the version, that were already closed.

Is there a way I can fix the version report so it shows our historical velocity and accurately predicts the version release date?

John Klein_806lg8 · Answer

I can't believe this is still a problem today. Very similar to this, we were asked to consolidate past effort and future effort into a new release.  We created a new Release and applied the version to all the appropriate user stories, now they ALL look like they all started on the same day and most were completed on that same day in the version report.. Exactly what you see above.

Such a crappy unusable feature if there is no way to use the actual start and end dates in the story itself. We have been using MS Dev Ops for the last 6 months and it's been night and day so far.

bswift · Answer

your option #1 is correct.  I did look at that article before posting but I didn't set the start date.  We found the first story that we did, back in August.  Set the start date to August 1st and still see all the scope being added on a single day.

Here's the chart.  You'll see all the stories in a single vertical line posted yesterday.

All of those stories still show their correct: create date, completion date, sprint, points etc.   When we assigned them to the release yesterday, the 'scope' of the version seems to be updated only on the day the story enters, and doesn't take into account the fact the story was already completed.

We're targeting what we're calling our MVP version.  MVP is a bit counter intuitive as minimal in this context is 3 completed months of dev, and another 2-3 to come.

Jack Brickey · Answer

I don’t use the version report but would be interested in understanding this better. As I see it the report is per version, so my first question is are you working with a single version or multiple? That is which of the following is true?

* you set the version on a bunch of old closed issues to say 3.4 or
* you set the version on old closed issue to several versions, say 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4?

i suspect #1. Have you reviewed this article explaining Version Report. Look at the version start date and insure it is set otherwise all issue show when they are added to version.