Sprint Capacity Calculator
Compute real sprint capacity in person-days and hours from headcount, leaves, holidays and ceremony or support overhead.
About this tool
Sprint Capacity Calculator
Compute real sprint capacity in person-days and hours from headcount, leaves, holidays and ceremony or support overhead.
The Sprint Capacity Calculator computes a scrum team's real sprint capacity using the standard formula: (headcount × working days − public holidays − planned leave) × hours per day, minus an overhead percentage for ceremonies, support and interruptions. It is built for scrum masters and engineering managers running sprint planning who need an honest hours figure — not the theoretical maximum — before the team commits to a sprint backlog.
How to use Sprint Capacity Calculator
- 1
Open Sprint Capacity Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
- 2
Enter the values you already know.
- 3
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
- 4
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Why use Sprint Capacity Calculator
Counts what actually disappears
Holidays, individual leave and ceremony overhead are all deducted explicitly, line by line.
Grounded overhead default
The 15% default reflects the Scrum Guide's event timeboxes (≈12.5% of a two-week sprint) plus support slack.
Per-person and utilisation view
Shows hours per person and what share of the theoretical maximum survives, so overcommitment is visible.
Common use cases
- A scrum master planning a two-week sprint with one public holiday and two engineers partly on leave computes the hours the team can actually commit
- An engineering manager justifies a smaller sprint commitment to stakeholders by showing 30% of theoretical capacity is consumed by holidays, leave and ceremonies
- A team that keeps overcommitting compares its planned load against calculated net capacity to recalibrate before the next planning session
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate sprint capacity?
Multiply team size by sprint working days, subtract public-holiday and leave person-days, multiply by working hours per day, then deduct an overhead percentage for ceremonies and support. Example: 5 people × 10 days = 50 person-days; minus 5 holiday and 4 leave person-days leaves 41; at 8 hours and 15% overhead that is 278.8 net hours.
How much sprint time do scrum ceremonies take?
For a two-week sprint the Scrum Guide's timeboxes total roughly 10 hours per person: sprint planning up to 4 hours, ten 15-minute daily scrums (2.5 hours), sprint review up to 2 hours and retrospective up to 1.5 hours — about 12.5% of an 80-hour fortnight. Teams with support duties typically reserve 15–25% overall.
Should a team plan to 100% of its capacity?
No. Capacity is an upper bound; planning to it leaves zero room for production incidents, urgent bugs and estimation error, which is why chronically overcommitted sprints fail. A common practice is committing to about 80% of net capacity and pulling more work in if the sprint runs ahead.
What is the difference between capacity and velocity?
Capacity is forward-looking available effort (hours or person-days) computed from the calendar; velocity is backward-looking delivered output measured in story points per sprint. Capacity tells you who is around this sprint; velocity tells you how much a full-strength team historically delivers — good planning uses both.
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