When the work is complete it is possible to compare rough initial estimate, total estimated effort and total time spent. For work in progress it is also possible to compare estimated effort to do and actually reported remaining time. Estimation accuracy reports allow to perform the comparison. It is an important metric for each agile team. It improves estimates and overall project planning. Accuracy percentage can be made visible as well.
Estimation accuracy may be tracked on different levels of your hierarchy: from work items (such as User Stories, Bugs) to larger planning entities (Features, Epics, Sprints / Iterations, Releases and Projects).
Comparison of estimated Effort and actual Time Spent makes more sense when estimates are made in ideal hours and not in abstract points. More infromation: Effort in Targetprocess
Reports for work items
Estimation accuracy for User Stories, Tasks, Bugs, Requests
Common recommended reports show Effort (Completed Effort) vs Time Spent. The reports are useful when you estimate Effort per work item and submit actually spent Time according to Time Tracking practice.
It is possible to build custom tabular reports showing lists of entities with their effort and time spent. Reports can be exported outside from Targetprocess.
Visual Reports also may be configured for the same purpose. Contact our Support team for assistance.
The following fields of entities are recommended to be used as data sources for the report:
- Effort
- Effort To Do
- Effort Completed
- Time Spent
- Time Remain
For complete work items usually we compare values in Effort or EffortComplete field with TimeSpent field.
For incomplete work items EffortComplete field can be compared with TimeSpent and EffortToDo with TimeRemain.
Please note that Effort, EffortComplete, EffortToDo, TimeSpent, TimeRemain fields for a User Story include the effort and times for its child Tasks.
Reports for planning entities
Estimation accuracy for Features and Epics
For planning entities such as Feature and Epic it is possible to input rough Initial Estimate and keep it for tracking purpose.
Common recommended reports show Initial Estimave vs Effort (Completed Effort) vs Time Spent. The reports are useful when you estimate Effort and submit actually spent Time according to Time Tracking practice.
It is possible to build custom tabular reports showing lists of entities with their initial estimate, effort and time spent. Reports can be exported outside from Targetprocess.
Visual Reports also may be configured for the same purpose. Contact our Support team for assistance.
The following fields of entities are recommended to be used as data sources for the report:
- Initial Estimate
- Effort
- Effort To Do
- Effort Completed
- Time Spent
- Time Remain
Estimation accuracy for Sprints (Iterations), Releases, Team Iterations, Projects
Project entity has Effort, EffortToDo, EffortCompleted fields. Special aggregation formulas (Summary Columns in tabular reports, custom calculations in Visual Reports, Metrics for Custom Fields) should be used for Time Spent totals on Project level.
Sprint (Iteration), Team Iteration and Release entities has no built-in fields for total Effort and Time Spent. Special aggregation formulas (Summary columns in tabular reports, custom calculations in Visual Reports, Metrics for Custom Fields) should be used for Effort and Time Spent totals on the level of Sprints (Iterations), Team Iterations and Releases
It is possible to input Velocity value for Sprints (Iterations) and Team Iterations manually. The value can be set manually and used as rough estimation or target capacity. For tracking purpose Velocity values of past sprints can be used in estimation accuracy reports as well.
There is no built-in Velocity field for Releases and Projects. Add special Custom Field manually should you require to track rough estimation or target capacity for your Releases. Use this Custom Field in further reporting if needed.
For all the entities it is possible to build a tabular custom report with summarized effort of all assigned work items using Summary Columns.
It is also possible to build Visual Report serving the same purpose. Contact our Support team for assistance.
Calculate and display ratio between Effort and Time Spent
Custom metrics can be configured to calculate ratio or percentage between Effort and Time Spent for your work items. Calculated values can be added to views using Customize Cards, used for highlighting with Visual Encoding, included to Visual Reports and exported when needed.
Estimation accuracy per role / user
It is possible to report that shows estimated effort vs time spent per role and per user. Build your report using Assigned Efforts data source for this purpose.
See Also
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