Capacity Planning
The process of determining team bandwidth available for upcoming work periods, accounting for leave, meetings, and other commitments to set realistic delivery expectations.
In-Depth Explanation
Capacity planning determines how much work a team can realistically commit to in a given period. It prevents overcommitment by accounting for actual available time after holidays, meetings, training, and other non-delivery activities.
Factors affecting team capacity:
- Team size: Number of team members available
- Working days: Accounting for weekends, public holidays, and company shutdowns
- Leave: Annual leave, sick leave, and personal days
- Meetings and ceremonies: Sprint ceremonies, company meetings, one-on-ones
- Support and maintenance: Time allocated to production issues
- Training and development: Learning time and upskilling activities
- Focus factor: Percentage of time actually spent on productive work (typically 60-80%)
Capacity planning approaches:
- Hours-based: Calculate available hours per person per sprint
- Story point-based: Use historical velocity as a guide
- Percentage-based: Estimate percentage of time available for sprint work
- Team-based: Calculate capacity at team level rather than individual level
Best practices:
- Plan capacity before sprint planning, not during
- Use historical data to calibrate estimates
- Account for the focus factor
- Build in buffer for unexpected issues (10-20%)
- Track capacity accuracy over time and adjust
- Consider skill-specific capacity when work requires specialised expertise
Business Context
Accurate capacity planning prevents overcommitment (leading to missed deadlines and burnout) and undercommitment (leaving value on the table), enabling sustainable and predictable delivery.
How Clever Ops Uses This
Clever Ops uses capacity planning in every sprint to ensure realistic commitments to Australian clients. By tracking velocity and capacity factors over time, we provide reliable delivery forecasts that clients can plan around with confidence.
Example Use Case
"A team of 5 normally delivers 40 story points per sprint, but with 2 people on leave and a training day, capacity planning shows realistic capacity of 22 points, preventing overcommitment."