The Art of CTO Sprint Capacity Planner calculates team sprint capacity accounting for individual availability, velocity history, planned time off, and meeting overhead.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you calculate sprint capacity?
Sprint capacity is calculated by multiplying available developer-days by a focus factor. Start with total working days in the sprint, subtract planned time off (vacation, holidays, training), subtract meeting overhead (typically 20-30% of time for ceremonies, 1:1s, and ad-hoc meetings), and apply a productivity factor (0.6-0.8 for most teams). For example, a team of 5 developers in a 2-week sprint with 1 day off and 25% meeting overhead has: 5 x 9 x 0.75 x 0.7 = approximately 23.6 productive developer-days.
What is a good sprint velocity and how do you improve it?
There is no universally "good" velocity — it depends on story point calibration, team size, and domain complexity. What matters is velocity stability: a team should have less than 20% variance between sprints. To improve velocity, focus on reducing work-in-progress (limit WIP to 1-2 items per developer), reducing context switching, improving estimation accuracy through regular retrospectives, investing in developer tooling that removes friction, and protecting the team from mid-sprint scope changes. Velocity typically improves 15-25% in the first 3 months of focused improvement efforts.