How do I change the start date in Portfolio 2.0?

[Dwight Thompson]

I have created a plan and calculated the scheduled. The next day (day 2 of our sprint) I made a few more changes and re-calculated the plan. Now my plan starts on day 2 of the sprint intead of day 1, pushing everything off 1 day. How can I change the start date back 1 day?

[Rhys Christian · Accepted solution]

Hey Dwight,

Great question. Sprints calculated in Portfolio will always start from the point of calculation. If you want to set fixed dates for your sprint I recommend you create a sprint on your agile board.

You'll need to be using the board as an issue source in your plan and a team will need to be associated to that board for the sprints to be pulled into your plan (drop-down under the team name to associate the team). When you click "Start sprint" in the agile backlog you can set the start date / interval which will be carried over into your plan.

This is also recommended because you'll have much more control over the sprints between your agile board and your Portfolio plan. Adding issues to your sprint from the backlog will sync with your plan and assigning issues to a sprint from your plan will sync with your backlog.

Checkout this part of our demo video to see this in action: https://youtu.be/LexaHkZls3g?t=976

Let me know if you have any questions about this.

Cheers,

Rhys

[Dwight Thompson]

Thank you. This is helpful.

[Ammar Malik]

How would this translate to the Kanban board?

[Deleted user]

I have the same question as Ammar? @Rhys Christian

[Joseph Turner]

Same question as Ammar as well.

[Ronny Hanssen]

I have the same issue. How can this be done when the plan is connected to a Kanban board?

[Ray Bradley]

@Rhys Christian (or anyone else): can you explain what's meant by "a team will need to be associated to that board?"

[Ray Bradley]

I answered my own question. I took this to be a Board setting to be found in JIRA Agile. It is, in fact, a Portfolio setting found on the Teams screen...there's a dropdown beneath each team name where this association is set. Hope that helps other confused persons.

[ChristianWaidner]

Same as above: What if I don't have a Scrum board for a project or if I use a Kanban board? How do I use a fixed start date so that calculate won't mess up my plan?

[William Rojas]

The flaw in this approach is that it assumes that no one would ever need to create a plan for work to start in the future, say build a plan in mid March for work that is to start in April. 

We have a plan that has several epics, the first epic has a target start of April 1st as well as the release that epic is in.  We also have 3 week sprints defined.  The schedule calculation shows work starting on April 17th, which is 6 weeks from when we created the plan (March 6th). Since April 1 lands in the middle of the Portfolio imagined 2nd sprint, the work start is pushed until the 3rd sprint.  This is a pretty simple and common use case that just seems like it hasn't been properly accounted for.

Is there anyway to set the start of the schedule calculation to align with the data in the plan and not when someone pushes the calculate button?  

[Josh Berman]

Unfortunately, there is not a way to set the start date for kanban. 

[Joseph Narai]

I have a project based on kanban we started back on Feb 18. I've been tracking, everyone has been logging time, etc. all going well. Today I accidentally hit calculate, and all of the epics and tasks have shifted to starting today (March 6) ... how can I get my state back to start on Feb 18? I'm completely screwed if this is unable to be put back somehow! Please help!

[Kim Clark]

I have the same issue.  There has to be a way to set the start date but I can not find it.

[Joseph Narai]

Just for anyone interested, this is a philosophical issue, rather than tracking and showing progress like a traditional gantt chart... the portfolio gantt just recalculates remaining work from the day you hit calculate. It's not what I expected, but does make sense according to their philosophy...

[Amy Kearns]

I would also like to know how this can work for a kanban board please?

[Ronny Hanssen]

Added my reply to the above answer as an anser instead of asn a reply first. No way to delete it, it seems :/. So, I have changed it to a "nonsense" message instead. Sorry about that...