Capacity Planning in Scrum Teams

Learn how to effectively plan team capacity in Scrum using SAFe and other Agile frameworks. Follow a step-by-step guide for Scrum masters, product owners, and agile coaches, with real-life scenarios and examples to ensure your team is equipped to deliver on sprint goals.

A Step-by-Step Guide Using SAFe and Agile Frameworks

Capacity planning is a crucial aspect of agile development that ensures teams have the necessary resources to complete their work efficiently. Capacity planning helps teams to identify and understand the available resources and capacity for a given period, usually a sprint, to enable them to plan their work effectively.

In Scrum, capacity planning is essential for the team to deliver on the sprint goals. It involves analyzing the team's capacity to determine the amount of work that can be completed in the sprint, identifying potential constraints, and ensuring the team has the necessary resources to complete their work.

Capacity planning involves three key steps:

1. Estimate team capacity: The first step in capacity planning is to estimate the team's capacity. This involves understanding the number of team members available to work on the sprint, their skills and experience, and their availability.

2. Define the sprint backlog: Once you have estimated the team's capacity, the next step is to define the sprint backlog. This involves identifying the work that needs to be done in the sprint and prioritizing it based on the team's capacity and the sprint goals.

3. Monitor progress: Finally, you need to monitor progress throughout the sprint to ensure the team is on track to complete the sprint goals. This involves regularly reviewing the work completed, identifying any potential issues or risks, and making adjustments to the sprint backlog if necessary.

Here is an example of how to accomplish capacity planning in Scrum:

1. Estimate team capacity: Start by estimating the team's capacity for the sprint. This involves understanding the number of team members available to work on the sprint, their skills and experience, and their availability. For example, if you have a team of six developers, but two of them are on vacation during the sprint, your team capacity would be four developers.

2. Define the sprint backlog: Once you have estimated the team's capacity, the next step is to define the sprint backlog. This involves identifying the work that needs to be done in the sprint and prioritizing it based on the team's capacity and the sprint goals. For example, if your sprint goal is to develop a new feature for your product, you may prioritize tasks related to that feature over other tasks that are less critical.

3. Monitor progress: Throughout the sprint, you need to monitor progress to ensure the team is on track to complete the sprint goals. This involves regularly reviewing the work completed, identifying any potential issues or risks, and making adjustments to the sprint backlog if necessary. For example, if the team is falling behind schedule, you may need to re-prioritize tasks or add more resources to the team to help them catch up.

When to plan for team capacity:

Capacity planning should be done at the start of each sprint to ensure the team has the necessary resources to complete their work. Additionally, capacity planning should be done whenever there is a significant change in the team's resources or availability, such as when a team member goes on vacation or leaves the team.

Real-life scenario:

Let's consider a real-life scenario where a Scrum team is working on a software project. The team has a sprint that lasts for two weeks, and their goal is to complete several features and bug fixes for the next release.

To accomplish capacity planning, the Scrum master and product owner work together to estimate the team's capacity. They determine that the team consists of six developers, but one of them will be on vacation during the sprint. This means that the team's capacity for the sprint is five developers.

Next, the product owner works with the team to define the sprint backlog. They prioritize the work based on the team's capacity and the sprint goals, ensuring that the most critical features and bug fixes are prioritized first, and there is enough capacity to complete them within the sprint.

During the sprint, the Scrum master monitors progress daily and updates the team on the progress towards the sprint goals. If they notice that the team is falling behind, they may adjust the sprint backlog to ensure the team can catch up. For instance, if one of the developers falls ill, they may need to reduce the number of tasks assigned to them or redistribute some of the work to other team members.

In conclusion, capacity planning is a critical aspect of Scrum that ensures teams have the necessary resources to complete their work effectively. By following the three steps outlined in this article and using SAFe and other Agile frameworks, Scrum masters, product owners, and agile coaches can ensure their teams are equipped to deliver on sprint goals. Remember to plan for team capacity at the start of each sprint and whenever there is a significant change in the team's resources or availability. With proper capacity planning, your Scrum team can be more productive, efficient, and successful in delivering high-quality products.

Team Member	Skills	Availability (hours/week)
John	Front-end development, UX design	40
Maria	Back-end development, database management	40
Alex	Full-stack development, testing	40
Sarah	Project management, QA	40
Total		160

In this example, we have a Scrum team with four members, each with different skills and availability. The total availability for the team is 160 hours per week.

During capacity planning, the team would take into account any known absences, such as vacations or holidays, and adjust the availability accordingly. For instance, if John is on vacation for a week during the sprint, his availability for that week would be zero, and the total availability for the team would be reduced to 120 hours.

Using a capacity calculation table like this can help teams estimate their capacity accurately and plan their work more effectively, ensuring they have the necessary resources to deliver on sprint goals.