Cycles & estimates

A cycle is a fixed time box — a week, a fortnight, a sprint — that you pull a set of issues into. Cycles give you a clean unit to plan against and to look back on: what did we commit to, what shipped, what slipped.

Estimates

Attach an estimate to an issue to size it. Planoda supports a points scale; pick a convention the team agrees on (Fibonacci-ish points or t-shirt sizes both work) and stay consistent. Estimates feed the cycle's scope so you can see, at a glance, whether a cycle is over- or under-committed.

Reading velocity

After a couple of cycles you have history: how many points the team typically completes. Use that as a planning ceiling, not a target to maximize — velocity is a capacity signal, not a performance metric. Insights surfaces completed scope per cycle so you can plan the next one realistically.

Carrying work over

Unfinished issues at the end of a cycle move to the next one (or back to the backlog) — they keep their identifier and history. A scope change mid-cycle is visible rather than hidden, so retros can talk about what actually happened.