Workstreams: AI-Powered Allocation

Last updated: January 27, 2026

Overview

Workstreams are AI-inferred categories that automatically organize your engineering work into cohesive streams sharing common objectives or technical domains. They help you understand where your engineering effort is going, track resource allocation, and make data-driven decisions about your engineering portfolio.

What You Get With Workstreams

  • Automatic Work Categorization: Machine learning analyzes your codebase, pull requests, and issues to intelligently group related work

  • Effort Tracking: Measure time investment (FTE days) across different initiatives

  • Portfolio Visibility: Understand your engineering landscape at a glance

  • Trend Analysis: Monitor how work distribution changes over time

  • Resource Planning: Make informed decisions about where to allocate team capacity

Understanding Workstream Hierarchy

Top-Level Workstreams

Primary categories representing major areas of engineering effort, such as:

  • Mobile App Development

  • Infrastructure & DevOps

  • API & Backend Services

  • Data Platform

  • Testing & Quality Assurance

Sub-Workstreams

More granular breakdowns nested within parent workstreams:

  • Mobile App Development

    • iOS Development

    • Android Development

    • Mobile Testing

Special Workstreams

Unlinked Work: Represents work that couldn't be automatically classified into any category. Review this periodically to understand gaps in your workstream model.

Key Metrics

FTE Days (Full-Time Equivalent Days)

The primary metric showing effort invested in each workstream. This is calculated from team member hours logged against issues and pull requests associated with the workstream.

Example: If a workstream shows 50 FTE days over 10 weeks, that represents approximately 0.5 full-time engineers working on that stream continuously.

FTE Days Cost (Optional)

When cost estimates are enabled, see the financial investment behind each workstream for budgeting and ROI analysis.

Contributors

Track which individuals and teams are contributing to each workstream, along with their contribution percentages.

Weekly Activity

See week-by-week breakdowns of effort, enabling you to:

  • Spot trends (growing vs. declining focus)

  • Identify capacity constraints

  • Plan future resource allocation

Viewing Your Workstreams

Main Workstreams Dashboard

Navigate to Allocation → Workstreams to access your workstreams dashboard.

Visualization Options

Activity Grid
A sortable table view showing:

  • Workstream name and description

  • Total FTE days invested

  • Number of contributors

  • Associated issues and pull requests

  • Cost (if enabled)

TreeMap
A visual representation where:

  • Size = Amount of effort (FTE days)

  • Color = Growth trend:

    • 🟢 Dark Green: Growing Fast (>60% growth)

    • 🟢 Light Green: Growing (25-60% growth)

    • ⚪ Gray: Stable (-25% to +25%)

    • 🟠 Orange: Shrinking (-60% to -25%)

    • 🔴 Red: Shrinking Fast (<-60%)

Time Series Chart
Line or bar chart showing effort over your selected time period, making trends immediately visible.

Date Range Selection

  • Default: Last 12 weeks of data

  • Minimum: 2 weeks

  • Customizable: Select any date range to analyze specific periods

Workstream Detail View

Click any workstream to see a comprehensive breakdown:

Overview Section

  • Key metrics and trend indicators

  • AI-generated summary of work in this stream

  • Parent/child workstream relationships

Timeline

Visual representation of effort over time, showing spikes, dips, and overall trends.

Sub-Workstreams

If this workstream has children, see how effort is distributed among them.

Contributors Breakdown

Tables showing:

  • People: Individual contributors and their effort

  • Teams: Team-level contribution and percentages

Work Items

Paginated, filterable views of:

  • Issues: Linked work items from your issue tracker

  • Pull Requests: Code changes associated with this workstream

  • Filtering and sorting options for detailed analysis

Managing Workstreams

Edit Workstream Details

Need to make a workstream name more meaningful for your organization?

  1. Open the workstream detail page

  2. Click Actions → Edit

  3. Update the name and/or description

  4. Save changes

Note: The AI classification remains intact; you're simply adding organizational context.

Merge Duplicate Workstreams

Sometimes AI creates similar workstreams that should be consolidated:

  1. Navigate to the workstream you want to merge from

  2. Click Actions → Merge into

  3. Select the target workstream

  4. Confirm the merge

What happens:

  • All activity from the source workstream moves to the target

  • Sub-workstreams are also merged automatically

  • Merge history is preserved in the audit log

  • Historical data remains intact for reporting

Audit Log

Track all changes to workstreams:

  • Who edited names or descriptions

  • When workstreams were merged

  • Complete change history

Access via Actions → View Audit Log on any workstream detail page.

Common Use Cases

1. Portfolio Health Check

Goal: "Where is our engineering effort actually going?"

  1. Open the Workstreams dashboard

  2. View the TreeMap visualization

  3. Identify your largest workstreams

  4. Check if the distribution aligns with strategic priorities

  5. Look for unexpected effort drains

2. Track Initiative Progress

Goal: "Is our new feature initiative on track?"

  1. Find the workstream for your initiative

  2. Review the effort timeline

  3. Check contributor count and consistency

  4. Examine recent PRs and issues

  5. Compare to planned allocation

3. Capacity Planning

Goal: "Do we have enough capacity for this new project?"

  1. Review current workstream allocation

  2. Identify teams with bandwidth

  3. Look at trend lines (growing/stable/shrinking work)

  4. Determine where capacity can be redirected

  5. Model scenarios for reallocation

4. Identify Shifting Priorities

Goal: "How has our work focus changed over the quarter?"

  1. Select a 12-week date range

  2. View Time Series chart

  3. Sort Activity Grid by growth percentage

  4. Identify fast-growing workstreams

  5. Investigate why priorities shifted

5. Cost Analysis

Goal: "What's the financial cost of our infrastructure investment?"

  1. Enable cost estimates in display settings

  2. Filter to Infrastructure-related workstreams

  3. Sum FTE Days Cost values

  4. Track cost trends over time

  5. Calculate ROI or cost per outcome

Mapping Workstreams to Projects

For advanced allocation tracking, you can map AI-generated workstreams to your business roadmap:

Projects View

Toggle from "All Workstreams" to "All Projects" to see work organized by roadmap items rather than AI categories.

Refinement Periods

Create allocation periods to:

  • Define team cohorts

  • Map workstreams to specific projects

  • Track allocation coverage

  • Generate executive reports

For detailed instructions on allocation and project mapping, see the Allocation Guide.

Display Settings

Show Cost Estimates

Toggle financial cost metrics on/off based on whether your organization tracks engineering costs.

Cumulative Percentage View

Switch between:

  • Individual values: Exact FTE days per workstream

  • Cumulative percentage: Running total as % of total effort

Show Minor Contributors

Toggle whether to display contributors below a certain threshold in breakdown grids.

Tips for Success

🎯 Review Regularly

Check your workstreams dashboard weekly or bi-weekly to stay on top of effort distribution and catch surprises early.

📝 Customize Names

AI-generated names are a starting point. Edit them to match your organization's terminology for better adoption.

🔄 Merge Duplicates

Keep your workstream list clean by merging similar categories. This improves accuracy and reduces cognitive load.

📊 Use Multiple Views

Don't rely on just the table. Switch between TreeMap, Time Series, and Activity Grid to get different perspectives.

🚦 Watch Growth Indicators

Color-coded growth indicators are early warning signals. Red/orange means declining focus—is that intentional?

👥 Check Contributor Mix

If a critical workstream has only 1-2 contributors, that's a knowledge concentration risk worth addressing.

💰 Enable Costs (If Applicable)

If your finance team wants engineering cost visibility, enable cost estimates for powerful financial reporting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How does AI determine which workstream a PR or issue belongs to?
A: Machine learning models analyze code changes, file paths, commit messages, issue titles, descriptions, and historical patterns to infer workstream membership.

Q: Can I create custom workstreams?
A: Currently, workstreams are AI-generated. However, you can edit names/descriptions and merge workstreams to shape them to your needs. You can also create Projects (via allocation refinement) for business-defined categorization.

Q: What happens to historical data when I merge workstreams?
A: All historical activity is preserved and reassigned to the target workstream. Reports will show the merged data, and the audit log tracks the merge for transparency.

Q: Why is some work showing as "Unlinked Work"?
A: Work items that don't have enough context for AI to confidently classify appear here. This can happen with very generic PRs, one-off changes, or work in new areas not yet established.

Q: How often is workstream data updated?
A: Workstream activity data is updated daily as new PRs are merged and issues are updated.

Q: Can I export workstream data?
A: Yes, use the export functionality on the Activity Grid to download workstream data as CSV for use in spreadsheets or other tools.

Q: What's the minimum date range I should analyze?
A: At least 2 weeks, but 4-12 weeks is recommended to see meaningful trends and smooth out weekly variations.

Getting Started Checklist

  •  Navigate to Investment → Workstreams

  •  Review the initial AI-generated workstreams

  •  Customize names and descriptions for clarity

  •  Merge any obvious duplicates

  •  Set a 12-week date range for trend analysis

  •  Explore TreeMap to understand portfolio distribution

  •  Drill into your top 3-5 workstreams

  •  Share findings with leadership

  •  Set a recurring calendar reminder to review workstreams

Support & Feedback

Have questions or feedback about Workstreams? Contact your Span customer success manager or email support@span.app.

Documentation last updated: January 2026