Capacity-based Planning
Unlike velocity-based planning, which uses the average of points completed in previous sprints as a direct reference, capacity-based planning first calculates how many hours of effective work are available in the sprint and then allocates work until that capacity is filled without exceeding it.
When to use it
- In sprints with significant variations in availability: vacations, public holidays, training sessions, or new team members joining.
- In teams with high variability in historical velocity, where averages are not representative.
- At the start of a project, when there is no team velocity history.
- In small teams where the absence of one person significantly changes the total capacity.
How to apply it
- Estimate the available capacity: calculate how many days or hours of work are available for each team member during the sprint, subtracting public holidays, vacations, recurring meetings, and any other commitment that reduces productive time.
- Break stories down into tasks: the candidate user stories for the sprint are broken down into tasks with individual time estimates, preferably expressed in hours.
- Assign tasks until capacity is covered: tasks are assigned to each person until their available capacity is covered without exceeding it. The goal is to match the sprint commitment to what the team can actually do, not to what it would like to do.
- Adjust during the sprint: if a task takes longer than estimated, other tasks are reassigned to compensate and, if necessary, the team negotiates with the Product Owner what is removed from the sprint.
Relationship with velocity
Capacity-based planning and velocity-based planning are not mutually exclusive. Many mature teams combine them: they use historical velocity as a high-level reference and available capacity as a fine-tuning adjustment for each specific sprint. Capacity always takes precedence over velocity: if the team only has 60% of its usual capacity in a sprint, it cannot commit to 100% of its usual points.
Common mistake
Not subtracting non-productive time. It is common to estimate sprint capacity by simply adding up each person's working days and multiplying by the length of their workday. But meetings, interruptions, refinement work, and administrative tasks significantly reduce the time available for development. A realistic capacity estimate subtracts that time; an optimistic one generates commitments the team cannot fulfill.
Resources
📄 Técnicas de estimación ágil: tres estrategias [Agile estimation techniques: three strategies; in Spanish]Scrum Manager Blog · Jul 2023
See also
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