JIRA portfolio planning and candidates

Joris Ee October 13, 2015

I'm planning several epics for one specific team. I've assigned 4 people for that epic to make sure we deliver on a specific release (date). The planning algorithm only assigns 2 of the 4 candidates. Why?

I haven't configured any skills. And there are no other epics planned for this specific group of people.

The epic is <50 days. If i change it to 70 days it uses all 4 candidates. Why? Why is there a threshold of some kind?

 

 

1 answer

1 vote
Martin Suntinger
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 13, 2015

Hi Joris, There are several factors that go into the scheduling algorithm, but a likely reason is the following: 

Portfolio optimizes to get work done "as fast as possible" AND "with as few people as possible" - this optimization criteria has been choosen to guide the algorithm, particularly in case of larger teams, in order not to "over-assign" and focus on smaller groups of people completing a task - as long as it does not compromise the duration. 

For Scrum teams, Portfolio "thinks in entire sprints", thus it could be that one scheduling option takes  let's say 1 full sprint and few days with 5 people, and another scheduling solution takes 2 full sprints for 3 people, the duration of both schedules is still "2 sprints", and thus considered equal, meaning the solution with 3 people would be preferred. 

If this does not explain the behaviour, I'd recommend opening a support ticket with a plan export attached to the ticket so that the team can investigate the particular case and comment. Thanks! 

Martin Suntinger, Product Manager for Portfolio

Joris Ee October 15, 2015

Hi Martin, Thank you for your reply. I'll try to alter the amount of work a bit to get the desired result. Cheers, Joris

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