Cumulative-Flow Diagram

pduda

Hi

I have been watching a bunch of videos on how estimates are useless and the new trend is "forecasting". It seems that what people suggest, is to count all the tasks a project has. Then count how many task are complete.

I would like to be able to take a snapshot of this each week.

Then generate a report that shows this along with a average line and a line showing the increase of total tasks (cause tasks always get added).

The idea is that the intersection of these two lines when projected out, give you a predication of when the project would be done.

I am new to smartsheet and have no idea how to do any of this. Any advice would be great.

I have attached and example image showing what i am talking about. But rather than story points, i am just looking at task counts

Paul Newcome

You won't be able to combine bars and lines like this, but you can use (suggested) just lines to show actual vs forecast.

You would need a column with your dates listed, a column for the actuals, and a column for the forecast.

The column for the actuals is a straightforward COUNTIFS looking for completion dates less than or equal to the date in the date column.

=COUNTIFS({Project Plan Complete Date}, @cell<= [Date Column]@row)

The forecast could be a little trickier or just as simple depending on exactly what you want to show and how you have your project plan set up. If you have a Due Date, you can use a basic COUNTIFS as above, but you would have it looking in the Due Date column for rows that are greater than or equal to [Date Column]@row.

=COUNTIFS({Project Plan Due Date}, @cell>= [Date Column]@row)