How can I see User Capacity during Sprint Planning in the Backlog?

[Petr Klapka]

During planning of a sprint I need to see how much of a users capacity is being used.  Clicking the ellipsis next to the user icons next to the sprint shows how many hours they are allocated for, but it does not show how many hours they are available for.  I need to see this so I don't over-allocate the developer.  Where are allocated hours vs. available hours visible? 

What's the point of having users painstakingly enter dates when they are on vacation, holidays, etc, when there is no apparent way to see a user's capacity during planning based on that information?  What am I missing?

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Petr Klapka -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Where in Jira Cloud are your team members entering in dates when they are on vacation, holidays, etc.?  If you are doing that in a marketplace addon app, you may want to investigate that tool for options.

If not...scrum teams often plan sprints together, ensuring they understand their goal, their solution approaches, and plan for the sprint...including their capacity.  Could team members just speak up when they feel over/under capacity?

Best regards,
Bill

[Petr Klapka]

Thanks Bill.  We're using a spreadshett now in conjunction with the individual allocation that Jira is able to display in the backlog view.  It does the trick, but isn't ideal since it requires two tools to determine if an individual is being over allocated.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for clarifying, and I agree with your other notes.  It is unfortunate that Jira does not have built-in capability to distinguish capacity and velocity planning...leading to the need for marketplace addons or using spreadsheets.  When needed for teams I supported, we just used a spreadsheet or wrote on a board for capacity checks during sprint planning.

[Ortal Gefen · Accepted solution]

Have not found a solution yet either. currently we are doing [XX] SprintName as the Sprint Title where XX is the Capacity. 

[Petr Klapka]

I've found a workaround that I'm not thrilled with.  It seems Jira views capacity as a Team based thing.  Since my team is divided into domains owned by different individuals that isn't ideal.  I need to plan on a "per developer" basis until I break down these silos over time.  My solution has been to use a spreadsheet to calculate each developers availability based on length of sprint, holidays, vacation days, an "overhead" offset and a few other factors.  The fact that Jira doesn't have this is pretty silly, but fortuantely it DOES show individual allocations in the backlog view.  That, combined with the spreadsheet gets me what I need, which is to know if any particular dev is overloaded.  Azure DevOps was much better at this.