Agile boards tend to need generous width to hold several workstreams as parallel swimlanes, but the content on each lane turns over completely every one or two weeks. This means the wall needs enough width for concurrent lanes rather than height for historical record, since old sprints are typically cleared rather than kept visible. A team running three or four parallel workstreams should budget roughly a metre of width per stream to keep cards legible without overlap. It’s also worth allowing a small buffer zone between swimlanes rather than butting them directly against each other, since cards drifting slightly during a busy planning session are easier to reassign correctly when there’s clear visual separation between each workstream’s lane.

A team running a single project over 6-12 months often needs a board that reads more like a timeline than a kanban grid, with height used to show phases or milestones stacked in sequence. Because this content stays in place for months, the board also needs to accommodate a growing amount of reference material pinned alongside the timeline rather than being cleared regularly. This tends to favour a taller board over a wider one, the opposite priority to an agile team’s layout. Where a traditional project timeline runs particularly long, some teams split it across two connected panels, one for completed and current phases and a second for future planning, which keeps the active section from becoming visually cluttered as the project progresses.

Some organisations run agile delivery inside a longer traditional programme, which in practice means two distinct planning needs on one wall: a frequently refreshed sprint area and a stable milestone timeline. Where both are needed, it’s usually better to size for two clearly separated zones on the same wall rather than forcing one board to serve both purposes at once. A visible divider, even something as simple as a printed line down the panel, helps keep the two zones from bleeding into each other over time. Colour-coding each zone consistently, for example using one background tone for the sprint area and another for the timeline, reinforces the visual separation further and helps new team members orient themselves on the wall without needing it explained.

A board sized for the wrong planning method typically shows the mismatch within a few weeks: an agile board that’s too narrow forces workstreams to overlap or get abbreviated, while a traditional timeline board that’s too short forces milestones to be compressed until they’re hard to read. Both problems tend to get blamed on the board itself rather than the sizing decision, which is why getting this right upfront matters more than it might first appear.

Teams sometimes shift planning method, moving from a waterfall structure to agile sprints or the reverse, and the wall sizing that suited the old method may not suit the new one. It’s worth revisiting board size whenever a significant change in planning approach happens, rather than assuming the original specification still fits.

For help sizing a wall around your team’s specific planning method, our large magnetic board.