The Last Capacity Planning Sheet You'll Ever Need
11 hours ago
- #AI Impact
- #Capacity Planning
- #Developer-Weeks
- Capacity planning should be done in real units like developer-weeks, not abstract story points, to ensure honesty and accountability in planning.
- Most capacity plans fail due to common mistakes: conflating effort with duration, not modeling holidays per person, overestimating new hire capacity, misclassifying tech leads, omitting support deductions, and lacking allocation gut-checks.
- Allocation split between feature work, technical work, and support is critical; visibility into this split enables informed strategic decisions and prevents misallocation of resources.
- AI has increased the importance of capacity planning by shifting constraints to planning rather than execution, and it can accelerate estimation and spike activities, improving planning efficiency.
- Use a simple spreadsheet for capacity planning to ensure numerical balance and transparency, with clear ownership by the engineering manager and collaboration on allocation with product management.
- Treat capacity plans as forecasts, not contracts, to foster predictability and adaptability, avoiding over-padding or sandbagging that distorts reality.