Tempo Budgets best practices

Tempo Budgets is certainly the financial flagship in the Tempo suite and maybe even in the Atlassian Ecosystem. Tempo Budgets is a complex and sophisticated tool and it is important that you adapt it in the right manner and that you understand how it works under the hood. To minimize the adaption effort and improve the performance of Tempo Budgets you should consider and follow some best practices guidelines that I have drafted below based on experience and challenges from our customers.

Limit the scope

Limiting the scope of a Folio (amount of issues within a Folio) is probably the most important key for the use of Tempo Budgets. It both improves the performance and gives you a more reliable status of your Folio and a more accurate forecast. Internal performance tests conducted in summer 2020 showed that performance can be over 25 times faster when you limit the scope of the folios and their associated numbers of worklogs, as shown below:

* We are currently working on performance improvements to address this issue.

Tests were conducted using an instance with the following specifications:

• Instance class : c5.4xlarge (32 GB memory , vCPU = 16 )

• Database instance class : db.m4.large

• Jira version : 8.8.1

• Timesheets version : 10.17.3

• Planner version : 7.17.3

• Budgets version : 13.17.3
  

Limiting the scope is mainly achieved by choosing the correct parameters that define your project. The Tempo Budgets UI wizard is a good start but for larger Folios you should create a JQL filter BEFORE you create the Folio. This might be achieved by various JQL functions and operators available. A more complete guide with recommendations can be found here.

A Folio can be placed in multiple Portfolios

Did you know that you can place the same Folio into multiple Portfolios? Make use of it! Reusing the Folios within Portfolios will enable you to avoid creating overly large scopes for the Folios. And it helps in order to analyze your data from different angles. One angle might be to look on the project side and another focus might be on the team view.

Let's assume you have Project 1 which team A, B and C are working on, and another, Project 2, which Team B and C are working on. You can create 3 Folios (for Team A, B and C, respectively) for Project 1 (and create a Portfolio for Project 1) and you can create 2 Folios under Project 2 for Team B and C, respectively. Then you could link the Folios from Team A under another Portfolio (e.g. Portfolio Team A) and place this Portfolio in another Portfolio tree. This way you get a comprehensive view on your projects and additional get a view on your teams - see what they are working on and how they are performing.

Make use of dynamic Portfolios

Dynamic Portfolios are another great way to organize/structure your Folios. E.g. you as project manager want a view on all Folios where you are the project manager or your financial manager wants a view on all Folios for the current financial year. This can be achieved by using custom fields on your Folio. Please refer to our documentation here.

Create templates

Creating Folios can be a time consuming process, especially when it comes to adding your teams and staff to the Folios. As you are aware, this configuration is key to ensure that all work on the issues within the scope of your Folio is captured and converted to a financial cost.

Simply create a Portfolio folder where you place your templates for reuse by you or others. The scope of the template could be a simple dummy issue that everyone has access to and others can set the proper scope later on. However, the main manual work of adding the resources is already done, saving you and your team time and effort. You could also set other recurring parameters in your template.

With a comprehensive set of templates you can start by copying a template and moving the copy to the Portfolio where it is intended to be. Rename and start editing from there.

Watch your Portfolio structure

Huge Portfolios and a huge subset of Portfolios is another reason for bad performance. Break your Portfolios down in a reasonable matter. Looking into a Portfolio of a complex, multi-level nested structure might not work as the calculation process behind that is heavy. So break up your Portfolio tree and create rather new trees than creating a complex set of branches.

Set the right progress calculation method

It is important that you understand how Tempo Budgets is calculating the progress of your Folio. The calculated progress of your Folio is the basis for the forecasting. Proper, understandable Key Performance Indicator numbers on the overview screen increase adoption and makes Tempo a the reliable tool you can trust. Dig into the different progress calculation scenarios, understand them and find the one that suits your Jira/Tempo setup.