7 years ago
Capacity calculation: highly anticipated and finally here! From now on, you can calculate the capacity of each user while planning Releases, Iterations, and Team Iterations. Finally, you will be able to see if a user is overloaded with tasks, or if they can take on more work in this particular iteration.
This will make it so much easier to plan your resources across one or many projects. We didn't forget those who work part-time, or those who are allocated by n% of their time for a particular project and period of time.
Available capacity will be summarized across one or many projects based on:
- Work days in a “work container” (Release/Iterations/Team Iteration)
- Weekly available hours by user
- User allocations, if there are any
Capacity can be calculated for User Stories, Bugs, Tasks and Test Plan Runs. It also works for Initial Estimates for Features and Epics if there are no child entities. In other cases, they will be estimated by the sum of child entities’ effort.
Please keep in mind that effort from Tasks is not included in User Story effort for capacity calculations.
Let’s dig into a few cases and see what it looks like.
Case 1: One Project, no Allocations
This is the easiest way to plan resources if you have one project and don't use allocations.
On Boards where you see cards grouped by users and Releases/Iterations/Team Iterations, you will notice a small box in the right corner of a cell. It shows the assigned effort and capacity of a person:
When you move cards from the Backlog to a Release, the values for assigned effort and capacity are updated:
Based on weekly available hours, we know that John works full-time, 8 hours each day. In August, we have 23 work days, so John’s capacity for July’s Release is 23*8, which equals 184 hours. When we assign a card to John, the system calculates assigned effort and compares it with available capacity.
On the next screen, you can see that John is overloaded for August's Release by 4 hours. It’s already easy to notice whether there is some spare capacity or an overhead. Cells with spare capacity are highlighted green, and cells with overhead are highlighted red.
To check the details of assigned effort and capacity, just hover your mouse over the tooltip in the right corner of a cell:
If some supported cards are not being displayed on a board (perhaps there are some filters applied), and there is some hidden work assigned to you, the cell will show the aggregate sum of all assigned effort, including hidden cards.
If you use points for estimation, you will be able to see the sum of assigned effort for a user in a particular Release/Iteration/Team Iteration, but not the capacity
Case 2: One Project + Allocations
Let’s dig into a case with more than one Project and user Allocations.
John will be allocated to Project Irol System for 40% of his hours, and to Mobile Platforms for 60%.
The John’s capacity for July for Irol System Project was immediately updated, 40% from 184 hours equals 73.6 h
If at least one of the users is allocated to a Project you should allocate others as well. Otherwise their capacity will be calculated on assumption that their allocation is 0%
Case 3: More than one Project + Allocations
Let’s now plan a Cross-Project Release (the scope can include work from one or more projects).
John’s allocations mean that he can dedicate 73.6 hours to Irol System and 110.4 hours to Mobile Platforms (40% and 60% accordingly):
You can click on a few cards and see the sum of their effort. This is especially convenient when moving a few stories from the backlog!
If you have more than 500 cards in one cell, Effort will be calculated by the first 500.
If you estimate work entities in points, capacity will not be updated. Capacity is calculated in hours only.
Case 4: Team Iterations
As you know, Teams and Team Iterations can be assigned to multiple Projects. Just keep in mind that Capacity and Assigned effort will be calculated based on work that is included in a particular Team Iteration, not based on all Projects to which a Team is assigned.
When Releases/Iterations/Team Iterations begin, their capacity value will be regularly updated based on the remaining amount of work days
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