Estimation & Forecasting

Two questions come up on every retainer: "When will this be done?" and "Are we still inside the budget?" Estimation and forecasting turn the issues you already track into honest answers to both — without spreadsheets or guesswork.

#The problem it solves

Most agencies answer "when will it be done?" with a gut feeling, and find out they were wrong when a client chases. The same goes for retainers — it's easy to look up one day and realise a client has quietly burned through their month.

The reason it's hard is that the information is scattered: some work is sized in someone's head, some clients move faster than others, and the backlog keeps shifting. Lantern pulls those threads together so the answer is always one glance away, and updates itself as work moves.

#How it works, in plain terms

There are four simple ideas behind it. You don't have to think about the maths — Lantern does that — but it helps to know what's happening.

Estimates — a rough sense of how big each issue is. You add these as you triage.
Pace — how much work your team actually gets through for a client in a typical stretch of time, learned from what you've finished before.
Backlog — everything still open for that client, added up.
Forecast — the backlog divided by the pace, which tells you roughly how long there is to go.

Because the forecast is built from your real history, it gets more accurate the more you use it.

#Choosing how you size work

Before estimating, decide how your team likes to measure. Go to Settings → Estimation and pick one:

Points — a quick way to say how big a job feels, without tying it to a clock. Good for most teams.
Hours — exactly what they sound like. Good if you plan or bill by time.

You can also set the sizes that appear as quick buttons when estimating, and how far back Lantern looks when judging a client's pace. Each option has a short explanation right next to it. This is a one-time setup for the whole workspace.

#Adding an estimate

Open any issue and use the Estimate field in the sidebar, alongside status and priority. Click it, then either tap one of the suggested sizes or type your own. That's it — the estimate is saved straight away.

You don't need to estimate everything at once. Sizing issues as you triage them is enough, and the forecast fills in sensible placeholders for anything still unsized (more on that below).

#Reading the forecast

Open Insights and find the Delivery Forecast. You'll see a row for each client with:

Backlog — how much open work is left.
Pace — how much that client's work is moving per sprint.
Clears in — roughly how many sprints until the backlog is empty.
Estimated clear date — the same thing as a date, shown as a range.

The range matters. Instead of a single false-precision date, you get an expected date and a later if-scope-grows date. Real projects rarely land on the dot, and showing the spread is more honest — and more useful when you're setting expectations with a client.

#The health dot

Each client has a small coloured dot so you can scan the whole list in seconds:

Green — comfortably on track.
Amber — worth a look; either work is coming in faster than it's going out, or the retainer is running warm.
Red — needs attention now.

Hover the dot and it tells you why it's that colour, so you're never left guessing what changed.

#Work that hasn't been estimated yet

You'll sometimes see a small "unestimated" marker on a client's backlog. Rather than leave a hole in the forecast, Lantern fills in a reasonable placeholder for those issues, based on how long similar work has taken for that client in the past.

This keeps the forecast usable even when sizing is incomplete — but the marker is your nudge that adding real estimates will sharpen the picture. The more you estimate, the less guessing Lantern has to do.

#Retainers and budget burn

If a client is on a retainer — a set amount of work or hours each month — Lantern can track how much of it has been used and how fast. You'll see how much of the budget is gone, and a quiet warning before a client is on course to run over, rather than after.

This is the difference between a calm heads-up mid-month and an awkward conversation at the end of it.

#What clients can and can't see

Estimates, pace, forecasts, and budget figures are for your team only. Clients never see them. They continue to see exactly what they saw before — their own issues and the progress on them. Forecasting changes how you plan, not what the client experiences.

#Keeping Jira in step

If a client's issues are linked to Jira, setting an estimate in Lantern also sends it across as story points, so both tools agree. It only ever flows one way — Lantern is the source of truth for sizing, and nothing is read back from Jira.