A capacity plan is based on what you know when you create it. Once execution begins, that picture changes.
Work gets completed. Estimates become more accurate. Some items take longer than expected. New work appears. A sprint may start falling behind even though the overall quarter still looks healthy.
Use Remaining effort & capacity to reassess your plan as this happens. It helps you compare the work still left with the capacity still available, so you can spot pressure early and decide whether you need to adjust the plan.
For example, you might discover that:
The quarter still fits, but the current sprint is falling behind - so some work needs to move to a later sprint.
One team won’t have enough capacity to finish its remaining work - while another team has room to take some of it on.
A high-priority item is taking longer than expected - forcing you to decide which lower-priority work should move out.
Unfinished work is likely to carry over into the next quarter - reducing the capacity available for what you’ve already planned there.
Instead of waiting until the end of a sprint or quarter to see what didn’t get done, you can identify these situations while there’s still time to make tradeoffs and replan.
Before you begin
Make sure your Capacity Planning view is set up:
Choose the timeframe field you want to plan capacity against, such as Quarter or Sprint.
Enter the available capacity for your teams or individual team members.
Go to View Settings and, under Capacity planning mode, select Remaining effort & capacity.
Once enabled, each capacity cell shows the item’s remaining effort as a read-only, grayed-out value.
💡 Notes:
The examples in this article use Story Points, but you can use any number field configured as the effort field for Capacity Planning.
A timeframe with no start or end date shows N/A for remaining capacity, because without dates there is no share of time to apply.
How remaining effort and capacity are calculated
When you switch to Remaining effort & capacity, Craft.io shows how much work is still left and how much capacity is still available.
Remaining effort is calculated based on an item’s effort and progress: Effort × (100% − Progress) = Remaining effort
For example:
An item estimated at 10 points that is 80% complete has 20% of its effort remaining: 10 × 20% = 2 points of remaining effort.
Remaining capacity is calculated based on your original capacity and how much time remains in the period: Capacity × % of time remaining = Remaining capacity
For example:
If a quarter has 300 points of capacity and 50% of the quarter remains, the remaining capacity is 300 × 50% = 150 points.
Craft.io compares these values to show whether the work still left fits within the capacity still available.
Reading your remaining capacity
Once you understand how remaining effort and capacity are calculated, the next step is to compare them at the level where you plan your work.
A plan can look healthy at one level while hiding pressure somewhere else. For example, your quarter may still have enough capacity overall, while a particular sprint - or a particular team within that sprint - is already overloaded and falling behind.
This is why it can be useful to look at remaining effort and capacity from more than one perspective:
Quarter - Does the remaining work still fit?
Sprint - Where is capacity under pressure?
Team - Which teams are over capacity?
In the example below:
The quarter-level plan looks healthy - the remaining work still fits within the available capacity.
When we switch to the sprint level, we uncover a problem: Sprint 4 is over capacity, even though the quarter overall is still on track.
We can then look at each team individually, comparing its remaining workload to understand the situation and decide whether adjustments are needed.
Reassess and adjust your plan
Once you identify where the remaining work no longer fits within the remaining capacity, the next step is to decide what to change.
Depending on where the constraint appears, you might:
Move work to a later sprint to reduce pressure on the current one.
Reassign work between teams when another team has available capacity.
Reduce scope or deprioritize work that is less important.
Reassess upcoming plans when unfinished work is likely to carry over into the next period.
After making changes, check the remaining effort against capacity again. The goal isn’t simply to make every capacity indicator green - it’s to understand the tradeoffs and build a plan you believe the team can realistically deliver.
As work progresses, continue to revisit your remaining effort and capacity. This helps you identify new constraints early, reassess your assumptions, and adjust the plan before they turn into missed commitments.
What comes next
Introduction to capacity planning - how capacity, effort, and timeframes come together.
Getting started with Actual vs Planned - Save your original plan and track how it changes as execution progresses.
Plan view mode 'Actual vs planned' - where are we now, and how did we get here?
Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies to ANY question!