Capacity Planning
Capacity Planning is a 30-minute team exercise in which each person lists everything that fills a typical working week, works out how many hours are really left for a given project, and the team adds those hours up by role. It comes from the Atlassian Team Playbook. The result is a small table of real weekly project hours that replaces the assumption that everyone is available full time, so commitments and estimates can be checked against it.
Facilitation script
- 1
Explain the purpose and how the output will be used. Ask the group what capacity problems they see and write one agreed problem statement on the board.
5 min - 2
Individual work in silence: everyone lists their weekly activities with hours, then calculates the hours and percentage left for this project.
5 min - 3
Build the capacity table on the board. Go role by role, enter each person's weekly project hours and add the total for the role.
10 min - 4
Compare the totals with what the current plan assumes. Mark the roles that are short and list responsibilities that nobody owns.
5 min - 5
Agree the review rhythm, assign owners for the unowned items and decide where the numbers go next, for example into the next estimation session.
5 min
Tips
Say clearly at the start that this is not a timesheet audit, otherwise people round their meeting load down and their project hours up.
Ask for a typical week, not the best or the worst one, and accept rough figures in whole hours.
The role totals matter more than any individual number, so keep the conversation on the table and away from how one person spends a Tuesday.
Common pitfalls
Skipping the pre-work, so people guess their week from memory and underestimate meetings and interruptions; the table then looks healthier than reality
Treating the session as a utilisation check on individuals, which makes people defend their numbers instead of reporting them
Counting every remaining hour as productive project time with no buffer for the unplanned, so the new plan fails in the same way as the old one
Producing the table and then leaving the existing commitments unchanged, which tells the team the exercise had no consequence
Running it once at kickoff and never updating it, although leave, new projects and role changes shift the numbers within weeks
Variations
Remote: each person fills in a private column of a shared spreadsheet first, then the facilitator reveals the role summary on screen. For teams larger than eight, run the individual mapping in parallel by role and bring only the role totals to the whole group. Teams working in sprints can repeat a five-minute version at the start of sprint planning, updating only what changed, such as leave, on-call duty or a second project.
Where it fits
When to use it
A project is starting and several contributors are shared with other teams or line work
The team has missed two or three commitments in a row and nobody can say where the time went
A plan was estimated in ideal days and you need to translate it into calendar time
Someone new takes over a team and needs a quick, honest picture of who has how much time
Before sprint or quarterly planning, so the commitment is sized against available hours
When not to use it
Trust in the team is low and people expect the numbers to be used against them; start with Working Agreements or a Team Health Check first
The question is which work matters most, not how much time exists; use an Impact & Effort Matrix or the MoSCoW Method to prioritise
The work has not been scoped yet, so there is nothing to compare capacity against; scope first, then count hours
You need to know who is responsible for what; a RACI Matrix or a Roles and Responsibilities session answers that more directly
Related methods
Frequently asked questions
What is Capacity Planning?▾
Capacity Planning is a short team exercise from the Atlassian Team Playbook. Each person lists what fills a typical week, calculates the hours left for a specific project, and the team totals those hours by role. The output is a table of realistic weekly project hours that planning and estimation can be checked against.
How long does a capacity planning session take?▾
The play is designed for 30 minutes with three to eight people: five minutes to frame the problem, five for individual mapping, fifteen to build and read the team table, and five for next steps. It only fits in that time if people have observed their week beforehand.
Who should take part?▾
The project lead and everyone who contributes work to the project, including people who are only assigned part time. Part-time contributors are often where the gap between assumed and real capacity is largest, so leaving them out defeats the purpose.
How often should a team repeat it?▾
Agree a rhythm in the session itself. Many teams do a full run at project start and a brief update at each sprint or quarterly planning, plus whenever team membership or parallel commitments change.
How is this different from estimation methods such as Planning Poker?▾
Estimation methods size the work. Capacity Planning sizes the time available to do it. You need both: an estimate only turns into a realistic date once it is compared with the hours each role can actually give.
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Try it freeMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from Atlassian Team Playbook.