Portfolio scenarios - changing team velocity to express pessimistic, most likely to optimistic

[Tarang]

The schedule configuration for a Portfolio Plan, where one defines Sprint length, Default velocity appear to be sticky for the plan.

So one can't establish scenarios where one can set (pessimistic, most likely, optimistic) velocity to view the scenario for the plan.

Is there a way to do this without creating separate plans?

Why are parameters like sprint cadance and team/group velocity sticky to the plan?

[samrobertsofficial]

Hi @Tarang,

Yes this is possible with Portfolio for Jira. 

If you enable the multiple scenarios feature you could then create 3 scenarios "pessimistic, most likely, optimistic". You would only need one plan to do this.

Then, you could adjust the sprint velocities for each scenario and compare them.

Hope this helps

Sam

[Tarang]

That’s what I thought should be possible alas that’s not what actually occurs.

i did create the 3 scenarios and set the “Default velocity” for each, however when we look at the plan and schedule view we do not see the effect take place.

[samrobertsofficial]

Ah, sorry our instructions weren't clear. For each scenario you'll need to set the velocity in the "Teams" tab.

"Default velocity" is a plan configuration setting, so it affects the entire plan (including every scenario). 

[Tarang]

How so as the “Teams” tab intuitively appears to me to correspond to the Plan and not to a “scenario”? Though I see one can assert a number of changes in the scenario, including team capacity as much as backlog item priority order.

In any case I did this and I do not see any changes directly as a result of this as i imagined to show up on viewing “Scope” by “Capacity”.  I see one has to trigger “Calculate” for the action to take effect, which I guess is a trigger to invoke when number of changes have been applied.

okay so that is all cool except:

Now the question is why would the capacity values for each sprint not be close to the Teams velocity?

For instance if the optimistic is set to 27  story points, why are most sprints in the plan showing to be between 6 and 11 story points?

[Tarang]

Ughh

I suspect the reason why portfolio plan viewed in ‘capacity’ shows partial fills on sprints is

1. number of teams are identified with the backlog 
2. team is solely defined with 1 skill (dev)

There is no need to make some complicated algorithm to establish this.

It should work with the Simplest assumption that all the backlog is fulfilled by the team(s) based on team velocity.  It should not be making any assumptions that are not explicitly configurable. Such as factoring subjective settings of skills on the team.  Assume the team will figure it out is they don’t have readily available skills as good news is human beings are a learning machine!

Why make it so complicated when simplest ideas will serve?

[David Hiatt]

THIS! > "It should not be making any assumptions that are not explicitly configurable."