Forecast staffing needs in Workforce Management
Forecasting in Workforce Management estimates how much work is coming and suggests how many agents you may need to handle it. It reads your team's historical work item data and projects request volume, required agents, and the gap between the two, so you can plan staffing before a backlog builds.
Forecasting is part of Workforce Management. It's available on Premium and Enterprise plans.
How forecasting works
Once Workforce Management is turned on and set up, forecasting runs automatically. A scheduled job recalculates the forecast every day using your team's past work item data and shows the results on a Forecasting dashboard.
The forecast covers the next 30 days. Because it uses past activity, the team needs sufficient history for the estimation to be meaningful. If you have just enabled Workforce Management, allow time for it to collect data before using the numbers for planning.
Before you begin
To use forecasting, you need:
Jira Service Management on a Premium or Enterprise plan.
Workforce Management set up, with your teams connected. Turning on Workforce Management creates the Forecasting dashboard for you. For help with setup, see how to set up Workforce Management.
Space or organization admins can create and configure forecasts. Anyone with access to the site can view the Forecasting dashboard.
View the workforce forecasting dashboard
When you turn on Workforce Management, a Forecasting dashboard is created for you on the Summary page.
Go to your service project.
In the sidebar, select Summary.
Find the Workforce Forecasting dashboard on the page.
If you don't see the dashboard, you can add it manually:
On the Summary page, select + to add a tab.
Select Workforce Forecasting.
The manual dashboard shows the same forecast as the one created for you automatically.
Read the forecast
The dashboard shows the following, recalculated daily for the next 30 days:
Current open work items - the work your team has open right now.
Predicted new work items - the volume forecasting is expected over the coming period based on your team's past work item data.
Estimated required agents - the number of agents estimated to be necessary to cover the work items based on the forecasted workload.
Predicted max work items - the largest work item volume based on the forecasted workload.
Below the summary figures, a chart plots the estimated backlog over time with an upper and lower bound. The band between the bounds is the confidence interval: the wider it is, the less certain the estimation. Use the trend and the band together to help determine your staffing needs, rather than treating any single day as exact.
Compare estimated new work item volumes against estimated required agents to see whether your current staffing is consistent with the workload. A rising estimated backlog is an early signal to adjust coverage before requests start to pile up.
Filter the forecast by team
If you manage more than one team, you can narrow the forecast to the teams you want to learn more about.
On the Forecasting dashboard, open the team filter.
Select one or more workforce teams.
Selecting a single team shows the forecast for that team. Selecting several combines them. With no team selected, the dashboard shows the forecast for all your teams together.
Turn forecasting off
Forecasting is tied to Workforce Management. If you turn Workforce Management off, the Forecasting dashboard is removed. Turning Workforce Management back on recreates it.
Was this helpful?