I’m having trouble with the auto-scheduling feature in JIRA Advanced Roadmaps. Here’s my setup:
One Epic containing multiple user stories
Several stories have sub-tasks underneath them
All sub-tasks have time estimates assigned
No sprints are currently assigned to any items
The Epic has a start date of June 1st, 2022 set in the roadmap start date field
The problem is that when I run auto-schedule, it doesn’t respect the start date I set. Instead of beginning on June 1st, it starts the schedule on April 26th, 2022 (which seems to be the next available business day from some other reference point).
I’ve tried setting the start date directly on the Epic but the auto-scheduler seems to ignore it completely. The generated timeline doesn’t align with my intended project start date at all.
Is there a way to force the auto-scheduling to begin on my specified date? Am I missing a configuration setting somewhere that would make it respect the start date field I’ve already populated?
Had a similar headache with this a few months back. The issue is usually related to how Advanced Roadmaps calculates backwards from release dates or forward from sprint dates, even when you think nothing is assigned. Check if there are any hidden constraints like release versions attached to your stories or if the Epic itself has a target date that conflicts with your start date. Another thing that caught me off guard was having portfolio-level dependencies that weren’t obvious - these can force the scheduler to ignore local Epic dates. Try creating a completely fresh plan with just your Epic and run auto-schedule there to see if the problem persists. If it works in isolation, then you know something else in your main plan is overriding your date settings.
definitely check your team settings. sometimes jira defaults to odd calendars. make sure working days are set right. also, look out for any dependencies, they can mess up dates too.
I ran into this exact issue last year. The auto-scheduler in Advanced Roadmaps has a quirk where it prioritizes capacity calculations over manually set dates. What worked for me was going into the plan settings and adjusting the scheduling algorithm to ‘Manual’ first, then switching back to ‘Auto’ after confirming the Epic start date is properly saved. Also worth checking if you have any team capacity configured - when capacity is set, JIRA tends to backfill available time slots rather than respecting your target dates. Try temporarily removing team assignments and see if that forces it to honor your June 1st date. The April 26th date you’re seeing is likely from an earlier plan calculation that got cached.