Sprint capacity calculator
Naive sprint capacity (team-size × sprint-days) overestimates by 40-50%. This calculator does the math from PTO, meetings, on-call, and your team's velocity history.
How it works
Edit any input on the left. The result panel on the right re-computes instantly. The breakdown shows where your team loses time to PTO, meetings, and on-call duty — the three biggest gaps between naive and realistic capacity.
No signup. No tracking. Pure client-side; nothing leaves your browser.
Your team
Engineers contributing this sprint. PMs / designers usually excluded.
Working days in the sprint. 5 for weekly, 10 for fortnightly.
Average across the team. Includes vacation, sick days, training, holidays.
Standups + planning + retros + 1:1s + cross-team. 8 is healthy; 15+ is a smell.
On-call typically halves the on-call person’s sprint capacity.
Averaged across the last 3-5 sprints. Leave at 0 if the team has no baseline yet.
Scaled from your team's historical velocity by the utilization rate this sprint. Treat this as the upper bound on your sprint commit — leave room for surprise.
Why naive capacity is wrong by 40-50%
The naive formula — team-size × sprint-days — assumes every engineer works 100% of every workday on sprint stories. In practice, the gap between naive and realistic comes from three places:
- PTOVacation, sick days, training, public holidays. Always averages out higher than the team thinks — over a quarter, it's typically 5-8% of available days.
- MeetingsStandups (5h/wk), planning (2h/sprint), retro (1h/sprint), 1:1s, cross-team. 8 hours/week is healthy; 15+ is a smell. At 8 hours/week with a 2-week sprint, meetings consume 16 hours per engineer.
- On-callEach on-call person loses ~50% of their sprint capacity to context switching, interrupt handling, and recovery time after pages. Teams that don't account for this systematically over-commit.
The full framework — including how to handle ramp-up time for new engineers, how to adjust for high-variance sprints, and when to NOT use a velocity model — read the sprint-planning hub article.
Want this built in?
Stride's Plan module pulls PTO from your HRIS, meetings from your calendar, and velocity from your sprint history. Capacity computes itself — no form to fill.
See AI sprint planning