What is team capacity?
Team capacity is the number of hours people realistically have for committed project work in a period, once meetings, support duty, holidays and other obligations are taken out. It is never the same as contracted hours.
How to calculate team capacity
Work it out per person, then add up. A simple capacity planning formula:
Capacity = (working days − days off) × hours per day × focus factor
The focus factor is the share of a day left for planned work once meetings, email and interruptions are counted, often 0.6 to 0.8. A full-timer with 10 working days, 1 day off and a 0.7 focus factor has (10 − 1) × 8 × 0.7, about 50 hours of capacity, not 80.
Capacity vs availability
Availability is when someone is at work. Capacity is how much committed work fits into that time. A person can be available all week and still have little capacity because they are on call, interviewing or running a launch.
Team capacity planning in practice
Plan to about 80% of capacity, not 100%: the gap absorbs bugs, urgent requests and the estimate that was wrong. Measure each person against their own capacity, so a part-timer is never compared with a full week.
Capacity planning for remote teams
Different public holidays, time zones and working patterns make one shared calendar misleading. Remote Team Collaboration Hub sets each person’s assigned work against their declared weekly capacity, so overload shows before the sprint slips.
Last reviewed 2026-11-01.