Workload management: how to see and balance your team's load

• The same person's cards keep missing their due dates.
• They have far more cards in progress than anyone else.
• Work waits on them in review or for an answer.
• They stop picking up new cards, or pick up too many and finish few.
• They say "it's fine" in standup, every day, about the same card.

None of these needs a timesheet. They show up on a board, if the board shows work by person.

Hours are hard to estimate and easy to argue about. Cards in progress are simple to count and hard to dispute. For each person, look at 3 numbers:

• Active: cards they're working on now, in any column between To Do and Done.
• Queued: cards assigned to them but not started.
• Due soon or overdue: how many of their cards have a deadline in the next week, or have already missed one.

Someone with 8 active cards and 3 overdue is overloaded, whatever their timesheet says. Someone with 2 active and 10 queued is fine today, but the queue needs a conversation.

A WIP limit caps how many cards a column holds. A limit per person caps how many active cards one person holds across the board. Together they stop the team, and each person in it, from starting more than they finish.

1. Start with 3 to 5 active cards per person. Fewer for large cards, more for small ones.
2. Count active work only. Cards waiting in To Do don't add to the load until someone starts them.
3. Treat it as a signal, not a rule. Going over is sometimes right. Going over every week means the team has taken on too much.

• Move the next card, not the current one. Reassigning half-done work wastes the context. Give the overloaded person's queued cards to someone with room.
• Pull, don't push. When someone finishes, they take the next card from the top of To Do, rather than having work assigned in bulk.
• Help finish. Someone with room can review, test or pair on an overloaded person's cards.
• Spread deadlines. If one person has 4 cards due the same week, move a date or move a card.
• Say no, or not yet. If everyone is at their limit, new work waits or something else stops.

Once a week, in sprint planning or a 10-minute check:

1. Look at each person's active, queued and overdue counts.
2. Move queued cards from anyone over the limit to anyone with room.
3. Check the next week's due dates for clusters.
4. Ask each person if the numbers match how the week feels. They often won't, and the difference is worth hearing.

On a board with 2 or more people, the Workload button in the board's top bar opens a panel with one row per person: their active and queued cards as a bar, broken down by column, and how many are overdue or due in the next 7 days. Select a person to filter the board to their cards.

• Set a workload limit in board settings, under General: the most active cards one person should hold. With no limit set, the panel shows the numbers without warnings.
• Above the limit, a person's row turns amber. Above the limit with an overdue card, it turns red.
• In standup mode (press U), each person's avatar has a ring showing their load against the limit.
• The first open column counts as the queue, unless it has a WIP limit of its own. Cards in done columns don't count.
• An agent connected over MCP can read the same numbers with get_workload, and tell you who has room before you assign a card.