Informed projection
Stanley M. Sutton · 2018
Informed projection is a technique for estimating work items created and completed for a software release. It combines counts of work items created and completed so far with models of items expected to be created and completed in the remaining schedule to yield projections of expected total items created and completed. Informed projection is not significantly more difficult to use than popular techniques like burn-down and burn-up charts but it overcomes limitations associated with those by accommodating variations in the total amount of work and in the rates of work creation and completion. Experiments confirm that simple models can yield relatively accurate projections fairly early in a release, that these models do not have to be unrealistically accurate, that effective models can be constructed simply, and that the approach works for projects with varied characteristics and patterns of work.