Team capacity

Each team member has a role, practice and weekly capacity in hours. The Delivery Lead maintains that baseline with the person’s active state, region and practice lead. Those details help the team discuss who is available for an assignment and which practice should own the work.

Assigned task estimates and recorded effort add context to the baseline. Before comparing them, agree the planning period and inspect the dates of the underlying tasks. A person’s total assigned estimate may span several weeks. Use the work that belongs to the review period when deciding whether another commitment is realistic.

• Capacity assumptions. Record the weekly hours the team intends to make available for delivery. Keep the baseline current when a person’s working arrangement changes, and agree who checks it before the planning meeting.
• Role and practice. Use the recorded role and practice to identify the relevant delivery group. The Project Manager discusses the assignment with that person and their lead before making a commitment that relies on their specialist work.
• Assigned demand. Inspect each person’s tasks, estimates and dates across projects. Use the assignment totals as a route into the detail, then identify unfinished work whose dates overlap the selected period, including tasks due later. Bring undated assignments to the manager for clarification.

Choose a common review period and define the capacity baseline. For work spanning periods, agree how much effort belongs in the current discussion. Check progress with the assignee before treating a full task estimate as remaining demand. Decide how the team accounts for non-delivery commitments when setting weekly hours. Leave calendars and other availability sources are connections or setup choices to arrange with the systems that own them.

Agree how a team member is identified when accessing personal work. Keep names and email addresses consistent and test the assignment filter with the actual person using it. Decide which manager maintains a person’s assignments when several projects need the same role, so changes are discussed before work moves between people.

A developer has a weekly capacity of 32 hours and unfinished assigned tasks estimated at 40 hours. The Delivery Lead opens the tasks and finds that 16 hours belong to the following week. The current planning discussion therefore starts with 24 estimated hours, then considers progress and other commitments before accepting more work.

A second project asks for another 12 hours in the current week. The managers agree to move part of that request to a later date rather than treating the full assignment total as a weekly allocation. Record the changed task dates and assignee where appropriate. In the rehearsal, ask the developer to find the revised tasks and explain which commitment they should work on next. The capacity decision should remain understandable after the meeting ends.

• Active team capacity — Active people with their role, practice, weekly baseline and assignment totals.
• My assigned tasks — The current person’s assignments with estimates, dates and states to help select work for the capacity review.
• Open resource risks — Resource concerns that need an owner and a mitigation alongside the assignment discussion.

Use capacity planning and assignment and revisit the baseline during delivery review and rebalancing.