Understanding Sprint Capacity
Sprint capacity helps your team answer the question: "How much work can we realistically commit to this sprint?" Planning with capacity in mind prevents overloading your team and leads to more predictable, sustainable delivery.
What is capacity?
Capacity is the total number of working hours your team has available during a sprint, after accounting for holidays, time off, and part-time availability.
For example:
- Sprint duration: 10 working days
- Team size: 4 people, each working 8 hours/day
- Raw capacity: 4 × 10 × 8 = 320 hours
- After 20% buffer for meetings, reviews, and unexpected work: 256 hours
How Varai Sprints calculates available capacity
Varai Sprints uses your organization settings to calculate capacity automatically:
- Work week — which days of the week are working days (e.g., Monday–Friday)
- Working hours per day — set in organization settings (e.g., 8 hours)
- Public holidays — holidays configured for your organization are excluded
- Sprint dates — only working days between the sprint start and end dates count
When you view a sprint, the Capacity section shows:
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Total available hours | Sum of working hours across all team members for the sprint duration |
| Estimated hours | Sum of estimated hours on all tasks and issues in the sprint |
| Remaining capacity | Available hours minus estimated hours |
| Capacity utilization % | How full the sprint is (estimated ÷ available × 100) |
Setting capacity on a sprint
You can review and adjust capacity from the sprint detail page.
- Open the sprint.
- Click on the Capacity tab (or Capacity section in the sprint header).
- See the breakdown per team member.
- Optionally adjust an individual's available hours if they are on leave or partially available.
If someone is on vacation for 3 days during the sprint, click their name in the capacity panel and set their available hours for the sprint period manually. This updates the total sprint capacity automatically.
Estimating task hours
Capacity is most useful when your tasks have time estimates.
To add an estimate to a task:
- Open the task.
- Find the Estimated hours field.
- Enter a number (you can use decimals — e.g.,
2.5for 2.5 hours). - Click Save.
The sprint capacity panel updates in real time as you add estimates.
You do not have to estimate every task. But without estimates, Varai Sprints cannot tell you how loaded your sprint is. Even rough estimates (1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day) are better than none.
Reading capacity signals
| Capacity utilization | What it means | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Under 70% | Sprint is light | Room for more items or the team is under-estimated |
| 70–90% | Healthy load | Good balance between commitment and buffer |
| 90–100% | Near full | Minimal buffer for unexpected work |
| Over 100% | Over-committed | Remove items or increase capacity — risk of missing sprint goal |
Consistently over-committing leads to burnout and missed goals. Aim for 80–85% utilization to leave room for reviews, bugs, and interruptions.
Velocity and past sprints
Velocity is how many hours (or story points) your team actually completes in a sprint. Over time, comparing planned capacity with actual velocity helps you plan more accurately.
To see your team's velocity:
- Go to Reports in the left sidebar.
- Select Velocity Report.
- Choose a date range to compare sprints.
If your team consistently completes 180 hours of work per sprint even when 240 hours are planned, plan your next sprint with 180 hours of estimated work instead.
Organization holidays and work week
Capacity calculations depend on your organization's schedule being configured correctly.
To check or update these settings:
- Go to Settings → Organization Settings.
- Review the Work Week section (which days are working days).
- Review the Holidays section (public holidays that should be excluded).
See Organization Settings for full details.