Capacity Planning

Compare the work a team has signed up for against the capacity it actually has, and make over-allocation visible before it becomes slippage.

When to use

• Deciding whether the team can absorb new work.
• Planning a quarter/sprint allocation across people and workstreams.
• Diagnosing chronic over-commitment.

Inputs to gather

• People on the team and their availability (FTE %, PTO/holidays, on-call, shared allocations).
• The time horizon (sprint, month, quarter).
• Committed + requested work with rough sizing (see estimation-sizing).

Process

1. Compute gross capacity = people × working days in the horizon.
2. Subtract overhead: meetings, support/on-call, PTO, ramp-up, and a realistic productivity factor (people aren't 100% project-billable — often ~60–80%). State the factor used.
3. That's net available capacity.
4. Sum committed demand (sized work) and compare to net capacity → surplus or deficit.
5. Break down by person/role to catch individual over-allocation even when the team total looks fine (a single bottleneck skill blocks everything).
6. If over-allocated, present options: cut/defer scope, add people, extend timeline, reduce overhead. Recommend one.

Output format

## Capacity — {{team}} · {{horizon}}
| Person | Avail % | Net days | Allocated days | Over/Under |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |

**Team:** net capacity {{X}} vs. demand {{Y}} → **{{surplus/deficit}} of Z days**
**Assumptions:** productivity factor {{%}}, overhead {{...}}
**Recommendation:** {{cut / add / extend}}

Always state assumptions — capacity numbers are only as good as the overhead estimate behind them.