Project Commander Docs ← Back to site

Scope Tab — Feature Guide

Scope tab on the CLAIM project — Include backlog tick box, Burned & Remaining (15% burned), Start Date (Sep 1, 2026), Target Date (Apr 22, 2027) and Delivery Forecast (Apr 19, 2027, ON TARGET, odds 75%) cards, the folded capacity model × demand model section, and the top of the opened Scope Timeline section with its period buttons, chart options and Filter by user chips (the chart itself starts below the edge of the picture)
Scope tab on the CLAIM project — Include backlog tick box, Burned & Remaining (15% burned), Start Date (Sep 1, 2026), Target Date (Apr 22, 2027) and Delivery Forecast (Apr 19, 2027, ON TARGET, odds 75%) cards, the folded capacity model × demand model section, and the top of the opened Scope Timeline section with its period buttons, chart options and Filter by user chips (the chart itself starts below the edge of the picture)
Scope tab fully expanded on the CLAIM project — four stat cards (Burned & Remaining, Start Date, Target Date, and Delivery Forecast reading Apr 19, 2027 ON TARGET), the Scope Timeline chart with its forecast lines and the Now, CC and P markers, the Demand vs. Capacity section open with Cum. Capacity 680 pts, Cum. Demand 471 pts and Buffer 209 pts, its daily capacity and daily demand lines and the P and T markers, and the Resource Breakdown table inside it showing each person's load with NO CAPACITY LEFT, AVAILABLE and UNDERLOADED badges
Scope tab fully expanded on the CLAIM project — four stat cards (Burned & Remaining, Start Date, Target Date, and Delivery Forecast reading Apr 19, 2027 ON TARGET), the Scope Timeline chart with its forecast lines and the Now, CC and P markers, the Demand vs. Capacity section open with Cum. Capacity 680 pts, Cum. Demand 471 pts and Buffer 209 pts, its daily capacity and daily demand lines and the P and T markers, and the Resource Breakdown table inside it showing each person's load with NO CAPACITY LEFT, AVAILABLE and UNDERLOADED badges

What it's for

The Scope tab tells the user how scope has changed over the life of the project, what's left, and whether the team is keeping up with — or falling behind — its own moving target. It exists because scope is rarely a constant: stories get added, estimates get revised, work gets pulled, and the deadline does not always move with them. The tab makes that movement visible.

It answers four questions: how much scope is in the project right now; how much of that has been done; how much it has grown or shrunk since a baseline date; and at the current pace, when will all the work finish.

The audience is delivery managers, programme leads, and engineering managers who own the deadline. The tab is a single project view; with Program view chosen in the header's project picker the scope numbers aggregate across projects but the sprint controls are hidden because cadences differ.

Header / stat cards

On a project with Sprint Mode on, an Include backlog tick box sits at the top of the tab, above the cards — the same project-wide setting the Dashboard shows. When it is off, open issues that are in no sprint are left out of every figure on the tab (done issues always count).

Four stat cards across the top, in this order: Burned & Remaining, Start Date, Target Date, Delivery Forecast.

Burned & Remaining card

Shows the breakdown of the current scope. Cancelled issues are left out: an issue Jira resolved as Won't Do, Won't Fix, Cancelled, Duplicate, Rejected, Invalid, Declined or Abandoned, or, when it has no resolution, one sitting in a removed status (see Scope events). The card follows the Filter by user chips on the Scope Timeline.

Start Date card

Anchors the timeline. The gear on this card opens a Date source choice:

The card shows the resolved date (or Not set), with the method named on the line beneath it — Method: Earliest start (oldest issue's created date). Switching method re-anchors the chart and the ideal lines immediately. The Start Date and Target Date gears open and close together: clicking either shows both cards' Date source choices.

Target Date card

Anchors the deadline. Its gear offers three methods:

The resolved date (or Not set) is the headline, with Method: Latest due · red dashed line on the chart beneath it. The chart draws that red dashed line at the target, marked T, and the ideal lines run to it.

Delivery Forecast card

The same Delivery Forecast card the Dashboard uses, so the projected completion date for all remaining work reads identically across tabs. Since 2026-09-04 it is not just the same card but the same calculation: the target, the capacity model, the demand model, the grid and the odds come from the one model the Dashboard and What-If tabs call, so the three tabs cannot disagree (until then this tab kept its own copy of that calculation). With the chart's Sprint period chosen, every figure on the tab — the cards, the chart and the table — covers only the issues in the chosen sprint, and the Delivery Forecast card measures against that sprint's end while the Target Date card keeps showing the project's own target.

Capacity model × demand model grid

Below the cards, closed when the tab loads, a folding section titled Delivery Forecast — capacity model × demand model holds the same grid the Dashboard shows. Its header shows the selected pairing's finish date and its distance from the target (Dec 4 · 9 days late, … · 3 days early or … · on target) without being opened; with no finish date the header shows nothing beside the title. It opens either from its own header or from the See detail below link on the Delivery Forecast card: every pairing's finish date, gap to target, and on-target odds in one grid, with the Critical Chain floor as a merged column on the right. A square whose work does not fit in the planned sprints reads Does not fit the plan instead of a date, with how much does not fit beneath it (21 pts don't fit). Among the squares that count capacity, the soonest finish is flagged ★ EARLIEST and the latest ▲ LATEST; the Critical Chain floor is never flagged, because it ignores capacity. Clicking a square drives the Delivery Forecast card, and the demand model is a shared choice with the Dashboard and What-If tabs. When the dependency-ordered and resequenced columns cannot be calculated, the section shows only the plain capacity comparison with an on-screen note — The dependency-ordered and rebalanced columns couldn't be calculated for this project, so only the capacity view is shown. Technical detail for support: plus the underlying message in selectable text — so the reason can be copied for support without the browser console. When the whole comparison fails, the section says This comparison couldn't be calculated from the current project data. The Delivery forecast card above still shows the forecast for your selected models.

Scope timeline chart

The primary chart, in a folding Scope Timeline section that is open when the tab loads. X-axis = time bucketed by the period selector; Y-axis = Points, or Hours (original estimate) / Days (original estimate) in a time project.

Scope timeline chart on the CLAIM project, with Scope (purple), Remaining (orange) and Ideal Burndown (blue), the dashed forecast lines (one for each demand model on Each sprint's own setting) climbing from today to meet the Scope line, and the Now, CC (Critical Chain floor) and P (projected finish, Apr 19) date markers
Scope timeline chart on the CLAIM project, with Scope (purple), Remaining (orange) and Ideal Burndown (blue), the dashed forecast lines (one for each demand model on Each sprint's own setting) climbing from today to meet the Scope line, and the Now, CC (Critical Chain floor) and P (projected finish, Apr 19) date markers

Period selector and navigation

Buttons across the top of the section: All Time, Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, Sprint. Weekly is selected when the tab opens; a week runs Monday to Sunday, as everywhere else in the app. Beside them, left/right arrows, a date box for choosing where the chart starts, and a Reset button that returns the chart to its automatic start (greyed out when there is nothing to reset). The arrows, date box and Reset are greyed out in All Time and Sprint.

With no date chosen, the chart starts at the date on the Start Date card. In All Time it starts at the oldest issue's created date, with one point per month. The chart runs forward past today far enough to show the target, the projected finish and the Critical Chain date.

Sprint narrows the whole tab to one sprint: a dropdown appears beside the button listing every sprint with dates (Sprint 7 (Sep 7 – Sep 20)), opening on the active sprint (or the latest closed one), and the chart shows that sprint's dates day by day, with the cards and the breakdown table counting only the issues in it. The Sprint button is shown only when the project has at least one sprint with dates, and not under Program view.

Core series

The chart renders a burndown view and a burnup view of the same scope data — together they tell the same story from two angles. A line can be hidden or shown by clicking its name in the legend under the chart; hovering a name explains it.

Burndown view (start-high, end-low):

Burnup view (start-low, end-high):

The three Burnup series are hidden by default — turn them on from the chart legend.

Optional series

Sprint markers

A Sprint markers tick box. When on, vertical lines mark sprint starts (solid) and ends (dashed), each with a small arrow that names the sprint on hover. A second tick box beside it, Include completed sprints, greyed out until markers are on, adds closed sprints. Both are shown only when Sprint Mode is on and the project has sprints, and are hidden in the Sprint period and under Program view.

Per-user filter

When the issues have any assignee, a row at the right-hand end of the chart options reads Filter by user: followed by chips: All (N) plus one chip per assignee (and Unassigned when some issues have nobody), each with that person's initials. It sits in the same place, in the same shape, as the people filter in the Demand vs. Capacity section below. The filter is multi-select — clicking chips adds and removes individual people; All is restored once no chip is selected. It also narrows the Burned & Remaining card and the Period Breakdown table. With exactly one person chosen, the chart draws that person's own Scope, Remaining, Ideal Burndown, Burnup and a Forecast from their own completion rate. With two or more chosen, the chart draws no lines.

Notices on the chart

Additional analysis

Beneath the Scope Timeline, an Additional analysis heading groups the two remaining sections.

Demand vs. Capacity section

A folding Demand vs. Capacity section, closed when the tab loads (Don, 2026-09-04; it opened by itself from 2026-08-23 until then). Its verdict — Over by N pts, Balanced, or Buffer: N pts — sits in the section header, so the answer is on screen without a click; opening the section shows the chart and the Resource Breakdown table it holds. It plots the team's workload against its capacity day by day and flags the stretches where the plan asks for more than the team has.

Chart and controls

How overload is counted (remaining-capacity rule)

In Spread and Due date placement, open work is scheduled no earlier than today — so the capacity that the overload flags, the overloaded-periods list and the section's feasibility score count is also only the capacity from today forward. Capacity on days that have already passed was spent on the work that is now done; letting it offset future demand hid real overloads. The per-day bars still show each past day's historical capacity — only the overload/score arithmetic ignores it. In Sprint dates placement both demand and capacity spread across the full sprint windows, so nothing is clipped there.

Resource Breakdown table

Inside the Demand vs. Capacity section, below the chart, under a Resource Breakdown heading: one row per team member. The section is closed when the tab loads, so the table appears once the section is opened; closing the section hides the chart and this table together.

Period Breakdown table

The last section, a folding table titled [Period] Breakdown (Weekly Breakdown, Monthly Breakdown, All Time Breakdown, Sprint Breakdown, …), closed when the tab loads — opened it is the longest thing on the tab by a wide margin. Its header shows the span of periods that had any activity (Jun 14 – Sep 13 (weeks with activity)). Inside it, the same period buttons as the chart, then one row per period, including periods with nothing in them. A note under the table reads Click a period to list every issue that contributed to it.

Columns

Expansion

Clicking a period with issues (marked ▶) opens it to list every issue that contributed to it. Each row shows the issue's key (a link that opens the issue), summary, assignee with avatar, +X pts under Added and/or Burned (or -), and the issue's status badge under Completed. An issue can show under both Added and Burned in the same period if it was created and finished within it.

Scope events

Three kinds of event drive the timeline:

The Scope line is the running sum of these signed changes. The events come from Jira's change history, so they are tied to calendar dates, not sprint boundaries. When an issue's change history leaves it at zero although it has a size now, its current size is counted from its creation date instead, so real work never drops off the line.

Scope growth and "never finishes"

The Average option behind the Delivery Forecast card's gear shows the project's own growth rate in pts (or hrs/days) a week. It is worked out as: the original estimates of every issue not in a removed status, minus the original estimates of those that are, divided by the weeks from the oldest issue's creation date to today. It is taken over the issues the tab is counting (so the Include backlog tick box and the Sprint period change it) but does not depend on which other period the chart is showing.

Two signals fall out of this:

Cross-cutting modes and settings

Empty / error states

How the numbers are computed

Effects on other parts of the app

© 2026 Project Commander · projectcommander.app · Support · Privacy · Security · Terms