Capacity and planned hires
What this page is — A grid of net plannable hours — one row per person or planned hire, one column per time box of the scenario — computed from the organisation's working calendar, holidays, approved leave, each person's allocation and the project's focus factor. What it is for — Knowing how many hours a sprint really has before you fill it, and seeing at a glance who is over or under. The problem it solves — Sprint capacity is usually a guess of "ten people × ten days × eight hours". That number ignores public holidays in a zone, approved leave, part-timers, meetings, and people who have not been hired yet. The grid replaces the guess with a derivation you can read in a tooltip.
Route: /org/tasks/planning?tab=capacity · Permissions: View planning (read the grid), Manage planning (overrides, include/exclude, skill areas, planned hires)
Module: Planning · Entry points: Planning → Capacity · Capacity → Add planned hire · Capacity → Link existing hire · a hire row's ⋯ menu · Quick create → Planned hire · Cockpit → Planning Pulse → Planned hires
1. How a cell is computed
For each person and time box the platform walks the calendar day by day and then applies three factors. The tooltip on every cell prints exactly this:
working days = gross days − holiday days − leave days
× hours per day × allocation × focus factor = computed hours
| Input | Where it comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Working days and hours per day | The organisation work week for the person's zone (else the organisation-wide row); hours = end − start − break | Falls back to the calendar settings, then to the attendance rules' standard hours, then to Monday–Friday, 8 hours |
| Hours per day override | Project settings → Planning | Replaces the calendar's hours when set |
| Holidays | Organisation holidays for the person's zone or organisation-wide | Optional (restricted) holidays count only when Include optional holidays is on |
| Leave | Approved leave applications | A half day deducts 0.5 |
| Allocation | The member's hours per week ÷ the organisation's working week (working days × hours per day), capped at 100% | Set with Edit member capacity on the Roadmap or on Define; a planned hire uses its own hours per week |
| Focus factor | Project default (0.80), or the time box's own value from the Goals tab | The share of a day that is plannable |
The tooltip ends with a Source line naming which calendar rule applied, so a surprising number can be traced.
2. Why you would use it
- Catch the sprint where half the team is on leave before you plan it full.
- Give a part-time colleague a fair share automatically instead of remembering to halve their load.
- Keep a person on the roster but exclude them from one sprint (secondment, training) without editing their allocation.
- Model a hire that has not happened, then hand the work over the day they join.
3. Reading the grid — step by step
Step 1 · Rows, columns, totals
Rows are the project's members followed by planned hires. A hire row carries a status chip (see Managing a hire from its row, below) and, for anyone with Manage planning, a ⋯ menu. Columns are the time boxes of the scenario, each with its date range. The last row totals net hours per column against the planned load, with a state chip.
Step 2 · States
| State | Rule | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Over | load ÷ net is above the overload ratio (1.2 by default, shared with the Risk radar) | Red |
| Under | load ÷ net is below the underload ratio (0.60 by default) | Amber |
| OK | Between the two | Green |
| No capacity | Net hours are zero but tasks are planned on the person | Grey |
| Excluded | The person is switched off for this time box | Grey |
The load bar under every column header is drawn to 125% of net, with a mark at 100%.
Step 3 · Override a cell
Click a cell and type net hours — net days on a project that plans in days; the grid, the totals and every tooltip figure read in the project's unit, and the derivation still shows hours per day (Enter saves, Escape cancels). Overridden cells are shown in bold; the tooltip prints Override: N h under the derivation, and the small reset icon clears it. Overrides survive Recompute and are carried into the next scenario committed for the same time box.
Step 4 · Include or exclude
The circle beside each cell toggles the person in or out of that time box. Excluded rows carry no capacity and no load for that column.
Step 5 · Skill area
The select on each row assigns one of the project's skill areas (from Project settings → Planning). It is a label to help you match work to people; it does not restrict assignment.
Step 6 · The value of a time box
When the project values its work (Settings → Money), each time box's totals carry what it is worth and how much of that is already done — the money side of the same picture the load bars show. A contractor row reads its day rate too, so an over-full crew and an over-priced one are visible in the same place.
Step 7 · Recompute
Recompute re-runs the calendar for every resource — after a leave request is approved or a holiday added — while keeping overrides, inclusion and skill areas.
4. Planned hires — field reference
A planned hire is a placeholder person you can plan against before they exist. Hires live at the organisation level so one requisition can serve several projects.
| Field | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name / label | Text | Yes | e.g. "Backend hire #2" |
| Role | Text | No | Shown on cards and in the assignee list |
| Skills | Tags | No | Type and press Enter |
| Hours per week | Number | No | Allocation = hours ÷ 40, capped at 100% |
| Zone (holidays) | Select of leave zones, or No zone (no holidays deducted) | No | Only holidays are deducted — a hire has no leave |
| Available from · to | Dates | No | Capacity is clipped to this window; "The end must not be before the start." |
| Projects | Toggle chips, one per project of the organisation | No | The projects that may plan on this hire; the current project is ticked when the dialog opens |
| Notes | Text | No | Requisition id, budget, expected start |
Add planned hire — here or on the Define tab, which also shows each hire's Planned as skill — opens the dialog; Add hire creates the hire (Save hire when editing) and, when the current project is ticked, adds it to every time box of the scenario. Link existing hire lists Planned hires in your organisation: Link connects an existing hire to this project, Add to scenario puts an already linked hire on the board.
Three rules never bend:
- A hire counts in capacity and load exactly like a member.
- A hire is never an assignee. When a scenario is committed, a task planned on a hire stays unassigned on the live board with a planned-hire marker; the commit preview lists these under Tasks planned on hires.
- When the person joins, replace the hire with the real member: every open task and draft scenario item planned on the hire moves to that member in each project where they are an active member (other projects are listed as skipped), the hire becomes hired, and the usual assignment notifications go out. Cancelling a hire removes it from every board and leaves its draft scenario items unassigned.
Managing a hire from its row
Each hire row shows a status chip beside the name — hover it to see the role:
| Chip | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active | The hire is still a placeholder; work can be planned on it |
| Hired → member name | The hire was replaced by that member; its tasks now belong to them (just Hired if the member's name is unavailable) |
| Cancelled | The requisition was dropped |
| Hire | A plain marker, shown when the hire's record cannot be read — for example a hire you can no longer see |
The ⋯ menu opens with a line naming the role and status, then three actions. The menu needs Manage planning and works on committed scenarios too, because a hire belongs to the organisation, not to the scenario:
| Action | What happens | Available when |
|---|---|---|
| Edit | Opens Edit planned hire with the same fields as Add planned hire. Changing hours per week or the availability window changes capacity on the next Recompute | Always |
| Replace with real user… | The menu turns into Replace "hire name" with a project member: pick someone in Pick a member (the list is this project's members) and press Replace. Every open task and draft scenario item planned on the hire — in every project the hire is linked to — moves to that member where they are an active member; other projects are skipped. The chip becomes Hired → member | Only while the hire is Active — otherwise greyed with Only an active hire can be replaced |
| Cancel hire | Asks Cancel planned hire "hire name"? — The hire is marked cancelled and disappears from every board. Draft items planned on it become unassigned; live tasks keep their placement but lose the planned hire. Confirm with Cancel hire | Only while the hire is Active — otherwise greyed with Already hired or Already cancelled |
Replacing and cancelling cannot be undone from the grid. To keep planning on a role after cancelling, add a new planned hire.
5. Worked example
Sprint R3-S2 runs 15–28 Oct, ten working days. Priya is in the Bengaluru zone, which has two holidays in that window, and has one approved half day; her row shows 7.5 working days = 10 gross − 2 holiday − 0.5 leave × 8 h/day × 100% allocation × 80% focus = 48h. Tom works 20 hours a week, so his cell reads 32h at 50% allocation. The team adds the hire "QA hire #1" at 40 hours a week, zone Bengaluru, available from 20 Oct: the hire's cell shows seven working days and 44.8h. The column total reaches Over at 128%; the planner excludes Tom from this sprint (he is on a customer visit) and moves two tasks to the next sprint until it reads OK. In November the QA engineer joins: the planner opens the hire's ⋯ menu, chooses Replace with real user…, picks her, and the chip turns to Hired → Asha; the six open tasks planned on the hire are now assigned to Asha.
6. The admin contract
- Hours per week of members is set on the Roadmap's capacity table (Edit member capacity), not in Planning.
- Holidays, zones, the work week and leave are People / organisation settings; Planning only reads them. A person without a zone gets organisation-wide holidays only.
- Overload ratio is the Risk radar setting of the project; underload ratio, focus factor, hours per day override and include optional holidays are in Project settings → Planning.
- Creating, editing, replacing and cancelling hires needs Manage planning.
7. Don't confuse this with…
- Planning assistants → capacity table — sets hours per week per member; this grid derives net hours per sprint from it.
- Risk radar → Team load — the live picture over the next two weeks; the grid is the plan per time box.
- Timesheets — hours actually logged; capacity is hours available.
8. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone shows Monday–Friday 8 h though the office works Sundays | No work week or calendar settings for the zone | Ask your administrator to set the organisation work week; check the tooltip's Source |
| A holiday is not deducted | It is an optional holiday, or in another zone | Turn on Include optional holidays, or fix the person's zone |
| Leave is missing from a cell | The leave is not yet approved, or the scenario was seeded before approval | Approve it, then Recompute |
| A hire has no hours in a sprint | The sprint lies outside the hire's availability window | Adjust Available from / to |
| A cell is No capacity | Net is zero but tasks are planned there | Move the tasks or include the person |
| I cannot edit anything | The scenario is committed, or you lack Manage planning | Clone the scenario; ask for the permission |
| Replace with real user… and Cancel hire are greyed | The hire is already hired or cancelled | Nothing to do; add a new hire if the role is open again |
| The member I want is not in Pick a member | The list holds this project's members only | Add them to the project first, then replace |
| After replacing, some tasks still wait on the hire | The member is not an active member of those other projects, so they were skipped — and the hire is now hired, so it cannot be replaced again | Reassign those tasks by hand in their projects |
| No ⋯ on a hire row | You lack Manage planning | Ask for the permission |