Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill every board, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Fieldnote, first sizing pass on the activation backlog, one week after the funnel showed 38 % of new companies never reach 10 interventions.
What the team took away
Four of the five S items touched the first hour of use. They shipped in one sprint and moved time-to-10-interventions from 14 days to 9, before anything in L was started.
How to run it
Preparation
Write each item on its own card. Sizing from a screen-shared list turns into a discussion about the list.
Put the four sizes on the wall with space under them, plus a fifth column for what is too big to size.
Decide in advance what S means in practice: 'one person, less than a week' is a definition, 'small' is not.
Cap it at thirty items. The value is the sort, and a long sort stops being one.
Agenda
10 min
Define the sizes Anchor each size to something the team has already done. Without anchors, everything lands in M.
20 min
Silent first pass Everyone places cards under a size at the same time, without talking. Speed is fine, this pass is a draft.
25 min
Look at the disagreements Only discuss cards that were moved more than once. Cards nobody touched are already agreed and do not need the room.
15 min
Empty the XL column Anything XL gets split into smaller cards or moved to 'too big to size'. XL is not an estimate, it is an admission that the work is not understood.
10 min
Pick what starts From the S column, choose what can start this week. A sizing session that ends without a start date was just sorting.
Pitfalls
Everything ending up in M. It means the sizes were never anchored. Force a distribution if you have to.
Converting sizes to days in the room. Do it later, alone, with historical data, or not at all.
Sizing items the team has no idea about. Those belong in 'too big to size', which is a real answer and the most useful column on the board.
Afterwards
The S column feeds the next sprint, the XL column feeds refinement. When the team wants finer resolution on a small batch, Planning poker is the step up.