Delivery Date Forecaster
Estimate when the remaining work will be done from how fast your team has actually been finishing, with a likely date and an honest range around it. Free, no sign-up, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
How the forecast works
The forecast uses what your team has actually finished, not what it planned. It takes the average of your recent sprints and asks how many sprints of that pace the remaining work needs:
Sprints needed = work remaining ÷ average finished per sprint, rounded up
Likely finish = start date + sprints needed × sprint length
A single date hides how uncertain it is, so the same sum is run at your fastest and slowest recent sprint. The gap between the earliest and latest dates is the honest range to share, and a wide gap is itself useful news: the team's pace is unsteady, and the date will be too.
A worked example
A team has 120 points left and finished 21, 18, 24, 20 and 17 points in its last five two-week sprints. The average is 20 a sprint, so the work needs 6 sprints: 12 weeks from the next sprint start.
At the best recent pace of 24, it needs 5 sprints; at the slowest, 17, it needs 8. So the likely date is 12 weeks out, with a range of 10 to 16 weeks. Telling a client "most likely the end of week 12, and no later than week 16" is a promise the team can keep.
Getting a forecast you can trust
- Count only finished work. Half-done items in a sprint's total make the pace look faster than it is.
- Keep the scope honest. If new work keeps joining the backlog, the remaining number grows each sprint and the date drifts. Re-run the forecast every sprint with today's remaining figure.
- Watch for changes in the team. Leave, holidays and new joiners change the pace. The sprint capacity calculator shows how much a short-staffed sprint should shrink.
- Use enough history, but not too much. Three to six recent sprints reflects how the team works now. A year-old sprint mostly reflects a different team.
Forecasts that update themselves
On ShipSprint's Business plan, delivery forecasts are calculated the same way from each team's measured velocity, and recalculated every time a sprint closes, so a slipping date shows up weeks before it's due instead of on the day. The owner command center shows those forecasts for every team on one screen. The 14-day trial runs on the full Business plan, with a sample project loaded and no card.
Questions about delivery forecasts
Three to six recent sprints. Fewer gives a shaky average; many more mixes in a team that may have worked quite differently.
Yes. Count finished items instead, as long as you count them the same way for the history and for the work remaining. Items of very different sizes make the range wider, which is worth knowing.
Because a single date is almost always wrong, and people treat it as a promise. The range shows how much the date depends on the team's pace, and lets you agree in advance what happens if it lands late.
No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
Keep reading
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