This section will give you a brief overview over how to set up Lighthouse with connections to your work tracking system, add teams and create portfolios.

Lighthouse currently works with Jira, Azure DevOps, CSV , and in a preview version with Linear. Check out the dedicated subpages for details on how to configure it Lighthouse for the respective systems.

Once you’re done with the basics, check out the detailed description of the product areas such as Teams and Portfolios.

Overview

Lighthouse has a few basic components that you need to be aware of:

  • Work Tracking Systems that define how to connect to your systems
  • Queries are how you can filter data for Teams and Portfolios
  • Team are entities that have a Throughput and work on a dedicated backlog
  • Portfolios are having Features where one or more teams work on

The following chart shows those building blocks and how they interact.

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A(Team) -->|has| G[Throughput]
    A -->|uses| B(Work Tracking System)
    C(Portfolio) -->|uses| B
    C -->|contains| H[Features]
    A -->|contributes to| C
    B -->|uses| F[Query]
    F -->|connects to| D(Jira)
    F -->|connects to| E(Azure DevOps)
    F -->|connects to| I(...)

Work Tracking System

The Work Tracking System is the place where your backlog lives. Lighthouse is designed to onboard more systems as needed, join our Slack or reach out via email if you’d like to see a new system supported.

Currently supported are Jira and Azure DevOps. The general workflow is the same for any Work Tracking System, the difference is in the information required to connect to the system and how to write the queries.

Creating a Work Tracking System Connection

You can create a new connection to your work tracking system either during the creation of your teams and portfolios, or via the Settings tab.

Once defined, you can reference them via name when you set up your teams and portfolio. What information is needed for the connection depends on the specific Work Tracking System, please check in the subpages for your system to get more detailed information.

Work Tracking Systems

Query

Lighthouse is using the built-in query languages from the work tracking systems to fetch the data needed for the forecasts. This makes the tool flexible and allows you to define teams and portfolios in whatever way makes sense to you.

For specifics on the query language as well as some examples and support, check the specific subpages for your system.

Teams

Before we can forecast anything, we need to have at least one team configured.

A team is defined by the fact that it is getting items to done. Or in other words, each team has a Throughput.

Lighthouse needs the Throughput to create forecasts. How to get this Throughput depends on the Query. It’s up to you how you want to define this in Lighthouse.

It often make sense to use the same team definition that you have in your environment. However, there might be situation when you want to define it differently, for example ‘merging’ the Throughput of two teams and model it as a single team in Lighthouse.

Most often also the team level items are something like User Stories and Bugs. However again, you can define what types should be included in this defintion. You may change this to other types. If you are looking to forecast completion dates of Epics, you may want to check out the use of Portfolios.

You need at least one team, and then you can start making use of Lighthouse. See Teams and Portfolios for details on product areas.

Portfolios

A Portfolio as a collection of Features. A feature is a higher-level item that contains child-items. The child-items are the items that the Teams are working on. Each portfolio must have at least one involved team. Many teams can contribute to a single portfolio, and each team can be involved in many portfolios.

Portfolios allow to scale your forecasts beyond the team level. When you need to answer when your collection of Features will be done, defining a portfolio is the way to go.

Refer to Portfolios to get more details on how to fine-tune and configure Portfolios.

Forecast

All of the above is done so that in the end we can run forecasts. Lighthouse is using Monte Carlo Simulations to run How Many (can be done for a specific team) as well as When forecasts. See How Lighthouse Forecasts for more details.

Feature Order

The order or features is crucial when forecasting completion dates. Lighthouse will forecast the features in order, top to bottom, based on the all Features that are defined in this Lighthouse instance.

It is therefore important that you maintain your Feature Backlog and adjust the order based on the needs of your business.

Predictability is not something you are, it’s something you do. Lighthouse will not be valuable if the input data is not good. You may also use Lighthouse to make suboptimal backlogs or subpar backlogmanagement more transparent.

Check Jira or Azure DevOps for more details on how the order is defined.

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