Sprint capacity calculator

In short: Sprint capacity, or team capacity for one sprint, is the hours a team has for sprint work: each person's working days in the sprint, minus holidays and their days off, times their hours a day, times a focus factor for the time that really goes to the sprint. The example team has 340 hours, 238 of them focus hours, and its average velocity of 35 points scales to a plan of 33 points.

Last updated 17 October 2026

How to use the sprint capacity calculator

1. Set the sprint. Enter its working days (10 for a two-week sprint of weekdays), any team days off such as a public holiday, the team's usual hours a day and a focus factor.
2. List the people who will do the sprint work, up to 30. Give each one their days off, in halves if you like (0.5 is a half day), and their own hours a day only if they work different hours, such as a part-time developer.
3. Add past velocity if you plan in story points: the points the team finished in its last few sprints. The calculator averages them and scales the average to this sprint's capacity.
4. Read the capacity. The table shows each person's days, hours and focus hours and their share of the team's capacity. Copy it as text for the sprint planning notes, as CSV for a spreadsheet, or share a link that opens the same team.

Everything updates as you type and nothing leaves your browser. It replaces a sprint capacity planning template in Excel: the arithmetic per person, the team total and the points forecast are done for you, and a person with impossible figures, such as more days off than the sprint has, is named rather than quietly counted.

The sprint capacity formula, with an example

Capacity per person is (working days - team days off - their days off) x hours a day x focus factor, and the team's capacity is the sum. The example is a two-week sprint of 10 working days for five people on 8-hour days, with Dana part time at 4 hours, Ben off for 2 days and Eli for half a day, at a 70% focus factor:

Eli has 9.5 days x 8 hours = 76 hours, and 70% of that is 53.2 focus hours. Added up, the team has 47.5 person-days, 340 hours and 238 focus hours. With nobody off, the same five would have 360 hours, so this sprint runs at 94.4% of full capacity. If a holiday such as Thanksgiving Day falls in the sprint, enter 1 team day off and the team drops to 304 hours; the business days calculator and the working days by month pages count the weekdays and US federal holidays between two dates for you.

Microsoft's guide to setting sprint capacity in Azure Boards describes the same inputs: capacity per day for each team member, their days off and the team's days off, and it notes that most teams set capacity in hours. In its words, “Capacity takes into consideration the variation in work hours by team members, as well as holidays, vacation days, and nonworking days.” Jira, Azure Boards and a spreadsheet all come down to the same arithmetic.

From capacity to story points: sprint capacity vs velocity

Hours do not turn into story points directly, because a point is a relative size that each team calibrates for itself. What carries over is the proportion. The example team finished 32, 38 and 35 points in its last three sprints, an average of 35. This sprint it has 94.4% of its full hours, so the forecast is 35 x 340 / 360 = 33.1 points, and the calculator rounds down to 33 to plan with. The forecast assumes the past sprints were run at full strength; if they were short-handed too, the average already undercounts and you can plan a little higher.

The focus factor does not move that number. At 60% focus the example has 204 focus hours instead of 238, but the points forecast stays at 33.1, because the velocity was earned at whatever focus the team really had. Use focus hours when the team plans tasks in hours, and the points forecast when it plans in story points.

The Scrum Guide treats this as a forecast, not a promise. On Sprint Planning it says: “the more the Developers know about their past performance, their upcoming capacity, and their Definition of Done, the more confident they will be in their Sprint forecasts.” Past performance is the velocity you type in; upcoming capacity is what this calculator works out.

Sprint capacity planning in practice

Collect days off before the planning meeting, not during it, and count the meeting days themselves: a sprint review, a retrospective and the planning session take hours that the focus factor should cover. Keep the same people on the list sprint to sprint, even when someone is out, so the availability percentage compares like with like. To keep the planning meeting itself to its time box, run it with the meeting timer, and the work hours calculator adds up a timesheet if you want to measure your real focus factor.

In Excel or Google Sheets, with the sprint's working days in B1, team days off in B2 and the focus factor in B3 (as 70%), a person with their hours a day in C5 and days off in D5 has =(B$1-B$2-D5)*C5*B$3 focus hours; fill it down and add the column. The Copy as CSV button pastes the whole table, totals included, ready to sort. For a full worked sprint, with Thanksgiving inside it and a focus factor measured from the team's own hours, read how to calculate sprint capacity.

Esta calculadora también está en español: calculadora de capacidad del sprint.