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Worktime, effort and duration
Health checks; Understanding effort ratio
Health checks; Understanding effort ratio

How do I check if my planning is feasible?

Reinder Visser avatar
Written by Reinder Visser
Updated over a week ago

To make it easier for you to understand the feasibility of your planning we will be introducing a number of simple checks, the first check is the effort ratio.
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The effort ratio is the ratio between the effort that is needed to complete your tasks and the effort that is available to complete them. A value of 1 or less is good, a ratio of more than 1 needs action.

It is calculated by:

[Effort required to complete]/[Effort remaining]

The effort ratio can be calculated on card level or on project level (from the Gantt chart).

Some examples

  • A task is planned to start next week and takes 40hrs, this task requires 40hrs to complete and has 40hrs remaining in the planning, the effort is 40/40 = 1.

  • A task is planned to start last Monday until Friday and takes 40hrs, the progress is 20%. Today is Wednesday, there are still 32hrs (80% of 40hrs) to complete while the remaining time is 24hrs (we-thur-fr), the effort is 32/24 = 1.33

  • A task is planned to start last Monday until Friday and takes 40hrs, the progress is already 50%. Today is Wednesday, there are still 20hrs (50% of 40hrs) to complete while the remaining time is 24hrs (we-thur-fr), the effort is 20/24 = 0.83

How is it calculated

We will take the example of a card that is planned with the following attributes:

  • Planned start: Monday October 23rd 9:00

  • Planned end: Friday October 27th 17:00

  • Estimated effort: 40hrs

  • Progress: 20%

Today is Wednesday, October 25th.

Based on the card attributes and today, a number of attributes are calculated:

  • Estimated effort, this is taken from the cards estimated effort: 40hrs.

  • Completed effort, this is calculated by multiplying the estimated effort to the cards progress:. 20% of 40hrs = 8hrs.

  • Effort to complete, this is calculated by deducting the completed effort from the estimated effort: 40hrs - 8hrs = 32hrs.

  • Effort remaining, this is calculated based on remaining planned timeline of the card, as today is Wednesday there are 24hrs remaining from start of today untill Friday October 27th 17:00.

Now the effort is calculated using the formula [Effort to complete]/[Effort remaining]: 32/24 = 1.33

This means that there is more effort required then there is effort available, you probably want to take action to make sure the task is completed in time.

Calculating the effort in Placker

Calculate effort

You can check the effort from the Gantt tab from the 'check plan' menu. When you calculate the effort, the panel will show you the overall effort for all planned cards.

If you like to see the effort for each card, you can make it visible either as additional Gantt columns or in the export.

Show in Gantt

You can view the effort as an extra attribute column, you can enable this column from the more settings panel like this:

Export to spreadsheet

You can also export the effort (and the calculated values) to a spreadsheet, for this you need to go to the export page, select effort as an attribute to export and copy the content in the text area to your spreadsheet.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know the values that have been used to calculate the effort?

The easiest way is to create an export of your data that includes the effort so you see exactly how the ratio is calculated.

The estimated effort does not seem to be the right value

The estimated effort is taken from the card, please check/confirm that it is set on cards.

The effort to complete does not take into account spent effort

At this moment the effort to complete is calculated from the cards progress, not from the effort spent, we plan to add this in one of the next iterations.

How is the overall effort calculated?

The overall effort, is calculated by taking the sum of the effort required to complete all the cards divided by the sum of the effort remaining for all the cards.ย 

More information on Gantt charts

If you want to learn other Gantt-related features, check out the Gantt section in our help center or ask us using the chat button.

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