Capacity

How do you calculate sprint capacity?

Sprint capacity = available person-days × sustainable velocity − QA reserve. Available person-days is where most plans go wrong: it is not headcount × sprint length. Start from working days in the sprint window, subtract each person’s public holidays (by their country), booked time off, and part-time fraction — then multiply by a velocity measured from completed work, and hold back a reserve for review and rework before committing the rest.

The four steps

Available person-days, honestly

For each member: working days in the window (their country’s calendar, not a flat Mon–Fri × weeks), minus their booked time off, scaled by their part-time fraction. Sum the team. A German public holiday does not remove a day from a colleague in Prague — per-person calendars matter the moment a team spans a border.

A velocity you measured, not chose

Story points per person per day, from completed work over the last several weeks. Until enough history exists, use a stated default and say so — a guessed velocity presented as a measured one is how capacity plans earn their reputation.

Hold back the QA reserve first

Review rounds, rework, and verification consume capacity that never shows up as new tickets. Reserve a fraction (a fifth is a defensible default; your own overrun history is better) and measure the commitment against what remains — entering the reserve should read as over-committed, not as calm green.

Commit against the remainder — and check afterwards

Committed points ÷ (budget − reserve) is the ratio to watch: past ~1.1 the plan is borrowing from people. The step almost nobody does: after the sprint, compare what the formula predicted with what happened, and let the miss correct the velocity.

Worked example — 8 people in Germany, Q3 2026

Computed from the statutory calendar, not invented: the quarter holds 67 working days, so the naive plan assumes 536 person-days. The national holidays that land on weekdays remove 0 of them — 0% gone before a single day of vacation is booked. At a measured 1.5 points per person-day with a 20% reserve, the honest commitment ceiling is 643 points, not 804.

National holiday sets only; regional days and real booked leave lower it further — which is exactly what the calculator below accounts for.

The two honest complications

Velocity is per available day, not per calendar day. Divide completed points by the days people were actually there, or every absence silently deflates the pace and the next plan inherits the error.
The formula is a ceiling, not a target. Filling capacity to 100% leaves nothing for the review loop, interruptions, or being wrong about a single estimate — which is why the reserve comes out before the commitment, not after the sprint fails.

Run it for your actual team

Countries, headcount, part-time fractions, booked time off — the calculator does the person-day arithmetic for a real team in seconds, statutes cited, no account.

Open the capacity calculator