Capacity Planning

Sprints

Overview

Capacity planning answers the question: how much can this team realistically deliver in the next sprint? It combines each team member's available hours, planned leave, and the team's historical velocity to give you a concrete commitment ceiling before you start pulling stories into the sprint.

Over-committing sprints is one of the most common causes of incomplete sprints and morale problems. Getting capacity right protects both delivery and the team.

Capacity inputs

InputWhere to set itWhat it affects
Allocated hours / weekProject member settings (Members tab)How many hours per week each person is committed to this project.
Sprint durationProject Settings → Sprint ConfigLength of the sprint in days. Used to calculate total available hours.
Sprint velocityKPIs & Reports → Velocity ChartAverage story points completed per sprint. The most reliable input for point-based planning.
Leave / absencesSprint detail view → Capacity panelDays off per team member during the sprint. Reduces their individual capacity.

Using the capacity panel

Each sprint has a Capacity panel in its detail view showing the team's availability for that sprint.

1Open the sprint from the Sprint List
2Click the Capacity tab in the sprint detail view
3Review available hours per team member
4Add any planned leave days for each person using the leave field
5The panel shows total available hours and the equivalent story points based on velocity

Hours vs. story points

Silverile shows capacity in two ways — use whichever your team plans with:

  • Available hours — total productive hours across the team for the sprint duration, minus leave. Good for checking workload distribution per person.
  • Point equivalent — the total hours converted to story points using the team's velocity ratio (points per hour from past sprints). Good for checking whether your committed points are realistic.
A healthy sprint commitment is typically 70–80% of total capacity — leaving buffer for unplanned work, code review, and meetings. Committing to 100% almost always results in incomplete sprints.

Individual capacity

The capacity panel breaks down availability per team member. Use this to:

  • Check that work assigned to each person matches their availability — use the Team Workload report in KPIs & Reports to cross-check
  • Identify if one person is carrying too much of the sprint (over 40% of points is a concentration risk)
  • Plan for part-time contributors or members on reduced hours for the sprint

Adjusting allocated hours

If a team member's availability changes permanently (e.g. they move to part-time), update their allocated hours on the project:

1Go to the project's Members tab
2Click the team member's row
3Update Allocated Hours / Week
4Save — the change takes effect for future capacity calculations immediately

Troubleshooting

The Capacity panel is empty

Capacity requires team members to have Allocated Hours / Week set on their project membership. Open the Members tab, click each member's row, and set their weekly allocation.

The capacity numbers look too high

Allocated hours assumes full availability across the sprint. If team members have meetings, on-call duties, or other overhead not reflected in their allocation, reduce their allocated hours to a realistic productive figure — typically 60–70% of working hours.

I can't add leave for a team member

Leave is entered per-sprint from the sprint detail view → Capacity panel. Click the team member's row and add the number of leave days. Leave reduces their available hours proportionally.

The velocity-based capacity doesn't match the hour-based capacity

That's expected — hours and velocity are independent measures. Use velocity for point-based commitments and hours for workload distribution. The two together give the most complete picture.

We have a new team and no velocity history

For a team with no history, use hours as the primary planning tool. After 3–5 sprints you'll have enough velocity data to switch to point-based commitments.

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