Using advanced statistics to forecast the estimated duration of a job

A powerful statistical tool for the prediction of estimated job durations - in addition to the one provided by the logman command - is available by installing a subset of IBM SPSS Statistics software packaged with HCL Workload Automation. This tool does not employ specific time series to calculate the estimated job durations, as logman does. On the contrary, it uses a very sophisticated algorithm on all the history of the previous ninety days to forecast the estimated durations for the next five days. The forecasts are precise to the very second.

Whereas logman is tailored to provide accurate estimates when the workload is subject to periodical shifts, the advanced statistical tool is ideal in case of more complex patterns. For example, the tool can be particularly useful to see beyond the accepted impacts of already known cyclic events, and understand what apparently hidden conflicts can affect the duration of a job. It can be effective to measure and forecast the durations of jobs along a critical path that occasionally does not meet its deadline.

The logman command logs job statistics from a production plan log file. By default, the statistics are logged automatically for all the jobs in the plan. On the contrary, the SPSS-powered statistical tool processes only the jobs that you previously flagged for this purpose.

Deploying the advanced statistical tool