--- title: "What is capacity planning? · DeliverySheet" description: "Capacity planning works out what each team can honestly promise for a period, then commits demands against that line in priority order until it is spent." canonical_url: "https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/capacity-planning" meta: author: "Tan Gravam" "og:description": "Capacity planning works out what each team can honestly promise for a period, then commits demands against that line in priority order until it is spent." "og:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_4046155ae39622e0.png" "og:image:alt": "Capacity planning — DeliverySheet glossary card" "og:image:height": "600" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "What is capacity planning? — DeliverySheet glossary" "twitter:description": "Capacity planning works out what each team can honestly promise for a period, then commits demands against that line in priority order until it is spent." "twitter:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_4046155ae39622e0.png" "twitter:image:alt": "Capacity planning — DeliverySheet glossary card" "twitter:title": "What is capacity planning? — DeliverySheet glossary" --- > Index of every page on this site: [llms.txt](https://www.deliverysheet.com/llms.txt) [← All terms](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary) **Glossary ** # **What is capacity planning?** Capacity planning establishes what each team can honestly promise for a period — gross FTE-months minus what is already spoken for — and commits demands against that line in priority order. The two failures are planning against a gross number (holidays, support rotations and interruptions are not available capacity) and planning against an organisational total (capacity is per team; a spare month of mobile capacity does not build a backend service). The plan holds when each team's line is real and the demands walked down it stop at the line. ## **How to do capacity planning for an engineering team** Four steps, in order. Establish each team's honest line: headcount times months in the period, minus the support rotation, the run-the-business work, booked leave and a realistic interruption reserve. Size each demand per craft in FTE-months with a confidence level attached to every figure, and send anything you cannot size yet to a time-boxed discovery instead of guessing. Walk the demands down each team's line in priority order, subtracting as you go. Stop where the line is spent. The step organisations skip is the third one. Sizing everything and then committing to all of it is not planning — it is a list with numbers next to it. The plan only becomes a plan at the moment something falls below the line and someone has to say so. ## **Capacity planning vs resource planning** Resource planning assigns named people to named work, usually in days or hours, and answers "who is doing what next week". Capacity planning at the commitment level answers a different question: can this team honestly promise this work in this period at all? The two run at different altitudes and neither substitutes for the other — but only one of them needs to happen before a date is promised outside the team. That is why the unit matters. A commitment-level plan built in hours invites a precision nobody has three months out; built in FTE-months it broadcasts its own error bar, which is exactly what a promise made on other people's time should do. ## **What to do with the first demand past the line** There are four honest exits and one dishonest one. Park it with a review date and the condition that would revive it. Decline it with a reason the requester can read. Displace something already committed, visibly, so the trade is on the record. Or commit it early anyway with a recorded exception naming why now, what is still missing, who is accepting the risk, and what would change the decision. The dishonest exit is rounding the line up until everything fits. It is the most common one, it costs nothing on the day, and it is the reason the quarter ends with three things late instead of one thing refused. [The essay behind “Capacity planning” →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/blog/capacity-planning-for-engineering-teams) [Topic: Capacity and what to measure →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/topics/capacity) ## **Related terms ** - [Capacity line](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/capacity-line) A capacity line is a team's honestly available capacity for a period, stated in FTE-months — the constraint that commitments are walked down against, in priority order, until it is spent. - [Resource allocation](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/resource-allocation) Resource allocation assigns a share of specific people's or teams' capacity to specific work for a defined period — the decision about who gets the capacity, as distinct from the calculation of how much capacity exists. - [KTLO](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/ktlo) KTLO (keep the lights on) is the work a team must do to keep what already exists running — support, on-call, patches, upgrades, renewals and routine operations — as distinct from work that changes what exists. This definition comes from building **DeliverySheet** — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date. $189/month per workspace, unlimited members. 7-day free trial — card required, cancel before it ends and you're not charged. I answer the support email myself. [**Start 7-day trial **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/login?next=/app) [**All terms **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary) [**See pricing **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/pricing) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DefinedTerm","@id":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/capacity-planning#term","name":"Capacity planning","description":"Capacity planning establishes what each team can honestly promise for a period — gross FTE-months minus what is already spoken for — and commits demands against that line in priority order.","url":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/capacity-planning","inDefinedTermSet":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary#termset"} ``` ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/#website","@type":"WebSite","description":"Turn raw work requests into structured, decision-ready demands before you commit people, budget, or a date. 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The two failures are planning against a gross number (holidays, support rotations and interruptions are not available capacity) and planning against an organisational total (capacity is per team; a spare month of mobile capacity does not build a backend service). The plan holds when each team's line is real and the demands walked down it stop at the line."}},{"@id":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/#logo","@type":"ImageObject","caption":"DeliverySheet","contentUrl":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/logo.png","inLanguage":"en","url":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/logo.png"}]} ``` ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://www.deliverysheet.com/sitemap.md) for all pages.