Capacity Planning Workshop Guide

02 / Application

When to Use Capacity Planning

Capacity Planning is most effective when run before commitments are finalized — not after teams are already stretched thin. Use this workshop whenever planning visibility is low, commitments feel uncertain, or new demand is arriving faster than teams can absorb it.

Prerequisites

Roles and Responsibilities

This workshop is most effective when both delivery and product perspectives are represented. Gaps in either view tend to produce capacity plans that look balanced on paper but miss real constraints in practice.

Scheduling and Timing

• Run two to four weeks before PI Planning to give teams time to adjust scope or escalate resourcing gaps before planning is locked.
• Plan for 90 to 120 minutes for a single ART; block a full day for multi-ART or portfolio-level sessions involving multiple value streams.
• Schedule a brief pre-session checkpoint (15 to 30 minutes) with RTEs and Scrum Masters one week before to confirm that capacity data is ready and the demand list is prioritized.
• A follow-up check-in at the midpoint of the PI is recommended to compare planned versus actual capacity utilization and catch drift early.

04 / Facilitation

Running the Workshop

Run this as a working session, not a presentation. Every step is designed to surface data, drive decisions, and document commitments — keep the energy collaborative and grounded in real numbers throughout.

Duration: Most Capacity Planning workshops run 1.5–2 hours. Larger portfolios or teams with significant scope uncertainty may need additional time. Build in buffer for discussion — that is where shared understanding of trade-offs and constraints really takes hold.

Presenting the Capacity Planning Process

1. Set the Stage — 10 minutes

   • Open by framing the purpose: this session exists to make commitments realistic, not to reduce ambition.
   • Establish the working agreement — data over opinions, constraints surfaced early, no blame for capacity limits.
   • Confirm the agenda and verify that all participants have the data they need to contribute.
2. Review Current Capacity — 20 minutes

   • Each team lead or Scrum Master shares their team’s velocity from the last three sprints and notes any outliers or atypical sprints.
   • Identify planned absences, training commitments, and any contributors who are only partially available during the PI.
   • The RTE captures this data in the shared capacity worksheet — keep it visible to all participants on the Miro board or shared screen throughout the session.
3. Calculate Available Capacity — 30 minutes

   • Apply the capacity formula: (team members x sprint days per PI) minus planned deductions for absences and overhead.
   • Translate velocity into an estimated feature throughput for the PI — how many story points or features can each team realistically deliver?
   • Aggregate individual team capacity into an ART-level view.
   • Surface any significant discrepancies between this PI’s calculated capacity and the previous PI’s actual delivery as a starting point for discussion.
4. Map Demand to Capacity — 30 minutes

   • Work through the prioritized feature and epic list from the top, mapping each item to the team best positioned to deliver it.
   • Track running capacity consumption against available bandwidth — stop adding work when the capacity line is reached.
   • Items that exceed available capacity move directly to the parking lot. Do not negotiate scope at this stage.
5. Identify Gaps and Explore Options — 20 minutes

   • Review the parking lot together: what demand did not fit, and what is the business impact of deferring it?
   • Explore options — scope reduction on lower-priority features, resequencing to free up high-demand skills, or escalating resource constraints to LPM.
   • Avoid making resourcing decisions that require leadership authority in this session. Capture them as action items with clear owners and timelines.
6. Confirm Commitments — 15 minutes

   • Read back the committed feature list with assigned teams and confirm verbal agreement from team leads.
   • Flag any items committed with known risk — document the risk explicitly rather than assuming it will resolve on its own.
   • Confirm parking lot items are captured with enough context for PI Planning review.
7. Assign Owners and Document — 15 minutes

   • Assign a clear owner to every open action item from the session. Unassigned actions disappear between now and PI Planning.
   • Confirm that the capacity worksheet and commitment list will be shared with all participants within 24 hours.
   • Set a date for the mid-PI capacity review before closing the session.

Common Anti-Patterns to Avoid

1. Using ideal capacity instead of realistic capacity

   Teams consistently overestimate available bandwidth by ignoring meetings, overhead, and unplanned work. Build in a realistic load factor — typically 70 to 80 percent of theoretical capacity — before mapping demand.
2. Negotiating scope during the mapping step

   The demand-to-capacity mapping step should surface constraints, not resolve them on the spot. Save trade-off discussions for the gap exploration step, or the session loses its structure and runs long.
3. Leaving resourcing gaps unescalated

   If capacity is structurally insufficient for the planned demand, document it clearly and escalate to LPM. A session that absorbs a resourcing shortfall silently is not helping — it is deferring the problem to PI Planning.
4. Skipping the mid-PI check-in

   Capacity plans drift. A brief mid-PI review comparing planned versus actual utilization catches overload before it becomes a sprint failure or a missed objective.

06 / References

References and Resources

• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Lean Portfolio Management
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): PI Planning
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Agile Release Train