Workload Estimates

Owned by Anna Ciepłota
Last updated: Nov 27, 2023
4 min read

Introduction

Workload reflects the amount of time a task takes.

If you want to synchronize workload information with your monday boards, ensure that:

  • To estimate how long a task will take (measured in hours) - add an original estimate column to your monday boards and do the field mapping

  • To use story points - add a story points column to your monday boards and do the field mapping

  • To use remaining estimates - remaining estimate value is based on the original estimate and time spent (logged work). Add a ‘time spent’ column to your modnay boards and do the field mapping.

Workload details

Click on the Workload details or Remaining Capacity cells to display a pop-up containing detailed information about all allocated workload resulting from the tasks in a given period.

You can change the aggregation (daily, weekly, monthly, by timeboxes). 

Workload formula

The table in the pop-up shows all tasks that contribute to the "Total workload" calculated using the following formula:

Total workload = Sum of all estimates of the assigned tasks.

*Workload values are presented in hours

The following rules apply:

  • If the task is overdue (the end date < current date), only the Logged work (Spent time) will be added to the Total workload.

  • If the task has not started yet (the start date > current date), only the Remaining estimate will be added to the Total workload.

Tasks with workload = 0 are displayed in the workload details dialog to signal to the user that some tasks still need estimation.

Effort modes

Effort modes determine the source of data used for the calculation of workload distribution. 

The following effort modes are available:

  • Original Estimate Mode - use this mode to show the planned workload versus the resource capacity.

  • Remaining estimate mode - The remaining estimate is automatically calculated based on the Original estimate and Time spent.

  • Story points mode - use this mode to show the planned workload versus resource capacity expressed in Story Points.

The effort mode can be shown in the following units:

  • Hours

  • Man-days

  • Percent

  • Story points

 

Original Estimate mode

This is the default Effort Mode - the 'Original estimate' is evenly distributed between the working days in the task period. The non-working days are ignored in the calculation.

You can define the working and non-working days by editing the Workload plans or Holiday Plans or Absence Plans.

Remaining estimate mode

The Remaining estimate reflects the time remaining to complete a task or an issue. The Time Spent is the sum of time-log entries, which you logged while working on a task.

If the Remaining estimate is not available, the Original estimate will be displayed instead when available.

How is workload calculated?

The Total workload presented for a given time period is calculated using the following formula:

Total workload = Sum of all estimates of the assigned tasks

*Workload values are presented in hours

For individuals, the formula takes into account tasks that have the Assignee set to this specific individual.

For Teams, the formula takes into account only tasks that have a label (or another mapped single-line field) set to this specific team. The tool does not check whether an Assignee of the task belongs to the Team created in Big Picture.

Calculated estimates might change depending on the selected aggregation. There are some additional rules.

Work has been logged:

Past duration (start date until yesterday) - the allocation is displayed as Logged Work evenly distributed over the past duration of the task.

Current date (today) to End date - The allocation for the remaining duration is displayed as Remaining Estimate evenly distributed over the remaining duration.

Logged work is based on the ‘time spent’ column of your monday board. Make sure that:

  • time spent column has been added to a monday board

  • time spent column has been mapped

Story points mode

The Capacity and Remaining Capacity of teams or individual team members expressed in time units can be converted into story points.

Configuration

  • To set the conversion rate go to Box configuration > Resources > Story points (requires Box admin security role)

  • The Story Point conversion ratio tab in the Box configuration might not be visible if conversion is disabled in the Box type.

Story point conversion

When you enable this mode, the capacities are converted from time units to story points. The story point estimation is evenly distributed over the duration period: For example, BPV-12 was estimated as 7 SP for the duration of 2d, so the result is 7/2=3.5 SP/d.