Capacity Planning

Capacity Planning

Table of Contents

• Overview
• When to Use
• Quick Start
• Reference Guides
• Best Practices

Overview

Capacity planning ensures teams have sufficient resources to deliver work at sustainable pace, prevents burnout, and enables accurate commitment to stakeholders.

When to Use

• Annual or quarterly planning cycles
• Allocating people to projects
• Adjusting team size
• Planning for holidays and absences
• Forecasting resource needs
• Balancing multiple projects
• Identifying bottlenecks

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

# Team capacity calculation and planning

class CapacityPlanner:
    # Standard work hours per week
    STANDARD_WEEK_HOURS = 40

    # Activities that reduce available capacity
    OVERHEAD_HOURS = {
        'meetings': 5,           # standups, 1-on-1s, planning
        'training': 2,           # learning new tech
        'administrative': 2,     # emails, approvals
        'support': 2,            # helping teammates
        'contingency': 2         # interruptions, emergencies
    }

    def __init__(self, team_size, sprint_duration_weeks=2):
        self.team_size = team_size
        self.sprint_duration_weeks = sprint_duration_weeks
        self.members = []

    def calculate_team_capacity(self):
        """Calculate available capacity hours"""
        # Base capacity
        base_hours = self.team_size * self.STANDARD_WEEK_HOURS * self.sprint_duration_weeks

// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Best Practices

✅ DO

• Plan capacity at 85% utilization (15% buffer)
• Account for meetings, training, and overhead
• Include known absences (vacation, holidays)
• Identify skill bottlenecks early
• Balance workload fairly across team
• Review capacity monthly
• Adjust plans based on actual velocity
• Cross-train on critical skills
• Communicate realistic commitments to stakeholders
• Build contingency for emergencies

❌ DON'T

• Plan at 100% utilization
• Ignore meetings and overhead
• Assign work without checking skills
• Create overload with continuous surprises
• Forget about learning/​training time
• Leave capacity planning to last minute
• Overcommit team consistently
• Burn out key people
• Ignore team feedback on workload
• Plan without considering absences