# Tracking planned work for the future in GitHub Projects

### Dec 23, 2025

The [Planned work](/content/tour/charts/planned-work-chart/index.html) chart shows how much work is planned for the future. It takes all the issues with a set due date and shows a summary per day/week/month/quarter of the total planned work. If you have set start dates, the chart takes those into account too.

Contents:

- [Tracking workloads](/content/blog/tracking-assigned-work-for-the-future-in-github-projects#section-1/index.html)
- [Allocate all work to the due date or evenly between start and end](/content/blog/tracking-assigned-work-for-the-future-in-github-projects#section-2/index.html)
- [Use any of your number custom field as a unit](/content/blog/tracking-assigned-work-for-the-future-in-github-projects#section-3/index.html)
- [Map your custom Date fields as the Start and End date](/content/blog/tracking-assigned-work-for-the-future-in-github-projects#section-4/index.html)
- [Creating the Planned Work chart](/content/blog/tracking-assigned-work-for-the-future-in-github-projects#section-5/index.html)

### Tracking workloads

The **Planned work** chart shows how much work is assigned to each team member for the coming days, weeks, and months. It helps you quickly identify who can take on more work and who is overloaded with too much work.

Here's an example chart:

In this example, the chart is grouped by **Month** and the bar segment is **Assignee**. The chart shows how much work is allocated per month for each assignee. The leftmost bar is the current month. The bars to the right are the future months.

You can click the bars to see the GitHub issues behind the numbers.

### Allocate all work to the due date or evenly between start and end

There are two options for allocating the work. Either it is fully allocated to the close date, or it is allocated evenly between the start and close date. You can choose between these in the chart settings:

If you have selected **Allocate all work to the end date**, all work will be contributed to the single date, the close date. With this selection, you don't need start dates at all.

If you select **Allocate work evenly between start and end date,** work is contributed evenly between the start and the end date.

For example, if you have an item with an estimated effort of 20 story points, and there are 10 days between the start date and the due date, two story points will be allocated for each day. If the start date is not set, the work is allocated from the current date until the due date.

### Use any of your number custom field as a unit

You can use any of your [number custom fields](https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects/understanding-fields/about-text-and-number-fields#adding-a-number-field) as the unit. By default, the chart uses the **issue count** as the unit, but you can change it to any of your custom fields from the **unit menu**.

In this example, **Deal Value** is selected as the unit. In the chart settings, you can specify the currency (e.g. Eur or USD):

Once you save the settings, the chart will display the numbers in the selected currency:

### Map your custom Date fields as the Start and End date

You can track planned work based on your [custom Date fields](https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects/understanding-fields/about-date-fields) by mapping the field to either **Start date** or **Due date** in the custom field mapping. To access the custom field mapping, select **Data Mapping** from the main menu and navigate to the **Custom Fields** tab.

The rightmost column shows the mapping of the column. You can adjust the mapping by clicking the item from the list:

You can map any of your **Date** fields to either **Start date** or **Due date**. Once mapped, the chart will use your custom dates as the timeline.

### Creating the Planned Work chart

To create a **Planned Work** chart, go to the **Charts** tab and click **Add new chart**.

A modal is opened with a set of chart templates. Select **New blank chart** to open the chart editor. Select **Planned work** as the chart type. In this example, we’ve selected grouping to be by **Week**, and bar segment to be **Assignee**.

That produces the chart seen at the beginning of this guide:

You can mouse-hover the bars to see the work allocated for each individual for each week:

Bars are clickable so you can see the issues behind the numbers.

Once you've created the chart, you can [place it in a report](/content/guide/github/add-custom-charts-to-a-report/index.html) and [schedule it to be sent via email or Slack](/content/guide/github/scheduling-and-sharing-reports/index.html).

**This article was written by Sami Linnanvuo**