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Planview Customer Success Center

Understand Card Size

Many teams want or need a way to identify the amount of work related to a given card to better understand the estimated amount, or size, of their efforts. Not all cards represent the same amount of work, effort, or value. To account for this, size is an optional field in every card in AgilePlace. The default size of any card is 1 unless otherwise established within the Card Size field.

           

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Sizing can help teams with:

  • planning
  • backlog replenishment/grooming
  • understanding how much work is in process at a given time
  • analyzing metrics such as throughput

Approaches to sizing vary by team, including a rough t-shirt size concept (e.g., 1 equals extra small, 2 equals small, etc.), a scale of 1 through 10, the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.), or even detailed estimates for hours of effort.

           

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Card Size and WIP

Because card size is often used to reflect larger projects or larger pieces of work, AgilePlace allows you to set WIP based on card size. When WIP is set based on card size, card size will be counted against your WIP limits, which often portrays your workload more accurately.

           

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Check out our article on WIP and Card Size to learn more about how to set WIP based on card size.

Card Size and Reporting

By default, reports with calculated results consider each card as equal in size (everything = 1). However, in several reports, there is an option to perform the calculation based on card size. In these reports there will be a checkbox to the right of the report that you can check in order to calculate your reports based on card size.

           

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For any cards that have the Card Size field populated, the standard results for those cards are divided by their card size once the card size box has been checked on these reports.
 

Card size

Actual Start

Actual Finish

Cycle Time if “calc by size” is on

1

Feb 14

Feb 17

3 days

2

Feb 14

Feb 17

1.5 days

3

Feb 14

Feb 17

1 day

Many reports feature the option to calculate results based on card size.

           

NOTE

The reports that do NOT include the option to calculate based on card size are: Planned Percent Complete and Exceptions.