How Forecasts Work

Empirical simulates a team working through open issues in your sprints and backlog.

The Team

The team members included in the simulation are depicted in the team section of Empirical:

The Backlog

Open issues in your sprints and backlog are picked up by the team in rank order (top to bottom). Thus how issues are ranked in your sprints and backlog has a huge impact on your forecasts!

The model respects issue assignments — e.g. if “George” is assigned to an issue, then the model simulates “George” working on that issue. If an issue is left unassigned, the model will assign the 1st avaialble team member during the simulation.

The Data

Empirical uses per-developer, per-estimate historical data from your project’s issues to ensure accurate forecasts. If data for a given developer or issue estimate is missing, the model will fall back from randomly sampling from the set of all historical project issues.