Sprint capacity calculator
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The Sprint capacity calculator helps you estimate how much work your team can realistically take on in the upcoming sprint, based on past performance, availability, and carry-over work.
This feature is available in Interactive and Asynchronous session types.
Use the Sprint capacity calculator when:
You're kicking off a new sprint and need to estimate how many story points your team can commit to.
You want to factor in team absences or national holidays.
You’re carrying over unfinished work and want it accounted for.
You need capacity insights based on historical velocity or a custom model.
Video overview
How to use the Sprint capacity calculator
In an Interactive or Asynchronous session, click Set capacity in the estimation view.
During an Asynchronous session, the Set capacity button will appear after you click Review personal estimates.
Choose a calculation mode. You'll be prompted to pick one of three approaches:
Guided forecast (recommended): Calculates capacity based on team members, days off, and baseline story point data.
Velocity-based: Uses historical data from previous sprints.
Custom formula: Manually define a team capacity in story points.
Click Next to proceed.
Guided forecast
The sprint name is automatically prefilled based on the sprint selected in Jira (the one for which you clicked Set capacity).
First, you need to set a baseline capacity. If there's no historical data, you’ll be asked to set a baseline manually. Our suggested formula is
Story Points per Day × Working Days in Sprint.In the Set initial baseline capacity modal, the value you enter is applied to all listed participants.
You can edit each person’s value later in the calculator.
New members added afterward won’t get this prefilled value. You’ll need to set it manually.
Set the start and end date. The start and end dates behave based on the sprint status:
Active sprint with set dates: Fields are pre-filled and not editable.
Inactive sprint with set dates: Fields are pre-filled and editable.
Inactive sprint without set dates: Fields are empty, but you can set them manually.
If the entered dates don’t match Jira’s sprint dates, you’ll see a warning. Sprint dates in Jira will not be overwritten.
The sprint participants will be automatically added upon opening the calculator, but you can also add members manually. Each participant will have their own capacity entry in the forecast.
Mark team and personal availability:
Team-wide holidays can be selected from a dropdown or column header. These apply to all participants.
Personal Days Off (PDO) are set individually. Click calendar blocks to mark absences for each member.
The system will highlight working versus non-working days (red = unavailable) and automatically calculate availability per person and for the team.
Decide whether you want to include spillover issues. If yes, click the Spillover (SO) tab and toggle Include spillover issues.
Review auto-filled work items and adjust the values if needed. You can manually edit the SO value if only part of the story remains or if the effort remaining differs from the original estimate.
What happens after adding spillover issues?
The Sprint SP (story points for the sprint) includes both planned stories and spillovers.
This lets you compare the available team capacity with new story points being planned, plus the carry-over work from the last sprint.
📌 Example:
Let’s say:
You include two spillover issues with a combined estimate of 4 Story Points (SP)
You also have a new task in the sprint, estimated at 3 SP
Initial total Sprint SP = 4 (spillover) + 3 SP (new) = 7 SP
Now, suppose you revise one of the spillover estimates from 3 SP to 2 SP:
Updated spillover total = 3 SP
New total Sprint SP = 3 (spillover) + 3 SP (new) = 6 SP
Note that changing a spillover estimate:
Does not affect the original estimate on the Jira issue
Is reflected in Agile Poker as a purple badge
Can optionally be saved as a comment on the Jira issue for traceability
Click Save spillover as comments to add a note on each Jira work item with the adjusted SO value, ensuring historical traceability and visibility across the team.
Once all values are entered:
Check the total available capacity.
Compare it with the story points assigned for the sprint.
Adjust backlog scope if needed.
Click Save to lock the team capacity and return to your Agile Poker session.
Key capacity metrics explained
Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
Baseline SP | Average story points per team member, based on past sprints or manual input |
Available SP | Adjusted story points, excluding time off |
Team Capacity | Sum of all available SPs |
Spillover SP | Story points that spilled over from the previous sprint (for example, unfinished work) |
Sprint SP | Total story points assigned to the upcoming sprint’s stories |