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The short answer
Capacity is the time people actually have, not the percentage they are allocated. For each person, start from their contracted capacity, subtract approved leave in the planning window, add up their allocation across every project, and compare the two. Anyone above about 85% of their available time is at risk; anyone above 100% is overloaded. Check people one by one, because team totals hide individual overload.
Why allocation percentages overstate capacity
- Allocation is set per project. 60% on one project and 50% on another each look reasonable. Together they are 110%.
- Leave is not subtracted. An allocation sheet says 100% whether or not the person is away for half the month.
- Part-time contracts are treated as full time. Someone working three days a week has 60% to give, not 100%.
- Allocation goes stale. It is set when a project starts and rarely updated when people move.
- Team totals look fine. A team at 96% overall can still have two people far beyond 100% and one with spare time.
A worked example
A team of five, planning the next four weeks (20 working days). Allocation is each person's total across all their projects.
| Person | Contracted capacity | Approved leave | Available | Allocated | Load |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asha | 100% | 0 days | 100% | 90% | 90%: at risk |
| Ben | 100% | 5 days | 75% | 80% | 107%: overloaded |
| Chen | 60% (part time) | 0 days | 60% | 60% | 100%: at risk |
| Dana | 100% | 10 days | 50% | 100% | 200%: overloaded |
| Eli | 100% | 0 days | 100% | 40% | 40%: room to help |
Available = contracted capacity × (1 − leave days ÷ working days in the window). Load = allocated ÷ available.
The allocation sheet alone says nobody is above 100%. Adding leave changes the picture: Dana has half the time their allocation assumes, Ben is slightly over, and Eli has room to take work from both. Add the team up instead and you get 370% allocated against 385% available, about 96%, which looks fine and hides all of it.
The thresholds to use
| Load | Status | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50% | Under-used | Room to take work from overloaded colleagues or start the next thing. |
| 50–84% | Healthy | Enough slack for support work, meetings and surprises. |
| 85–100% | At risk | Fully booked. Any unplanned work pushes something out. |
| Over 100% | Overloaded | More work than time. Something will slip; decide what, before it does. |
Planning people to 100% is the most common mistake. Software work always includes interruptions: production issues, reviews, questions from other teams. 85% leaves room for them.
What to do when someone is overloaded
- Move work to someone under-used with the right skills, like Eli in the example.
- Move dates for the lower-priority project, and tell its stakeholders now rather than at the deadline.
- Reduce the number of projects a person is spread across. Switching between four projects costs more than the allocation shows.
- Feed it into the forecast. Lost capacity pushes delivery dates out; see how to forecast a delivery date from Jira.
Where the data lives
Capacity planning is hard mostly because the inputs sit in different places. Jira knows who is assigned to which issues. Allocation across projects usually lives in a spreadsheet or resource plan. Leave sits in an HR system or a shared calendar. Each is accurate on its own; the overload only shows when they are combined, per person, for the same window.
Practical habits that help:
- Record allocation per person per project in one place, and review it monthly.
- Make approved leave visible to delivery leads as soon as it is approved, not when the person is already away.
- Plan a rolling window, such as the next 30 days, and recheck it every week.
- Look at people, not just team totals, but report at team and project level. The goal is to find where work is stuck, not to rate individuals.
How Exentras handles capacity
Exentras brings allocation, leave and project data together. Team capacity shows each person's allocation across all projects against their own capacity, which can be set below 100% for part-time staff, using the same bands: under 85%, 85–100% and over 100%. Approved leave over the next 30 days reduces each person's effective capacity, so you see who is really available.
Overload also feeds the rest of the product: it is one of the signals in each project's risk score and delay forecast. Team capacity is included in the Growth and Enterprise plans. On Enterprise, portfolio capacity alerts also flag anyone who is overloaded, or whose approved leave leaves them short of the time their allocation needs. See pricing.