Capacity Mapping: When You Try to Plan for Chaos with a Spreadsheet
(Because Humans Are Not Excel Rows and Mondays Are Not Predictable)
Entry 61.2 from The A to Z Guide to the Agile Galaxy
“Capacity mapping is the science of saying ‘we’ve got exactly 73% of someone’s brain this sprint’, and then wondering why nothing valuable got done.”
🛸 The Problem with Trying to Map Human Potential
Picture this:
You open the capacity sheet.
It says someone is available for 83.5% of the sprint.
Someone else is at 41%, because they’re in three projects and recovering from a retro.
And someone is at 100%, but just had a baby.
Somehow, this is meant to help you forecast delivery.
Capacity mapping sounds logical. It sounds safe. It’s quantifiable.
But in real Agile teams? It’s often just a very organized illusion.
🌀 What Is Capacity Mapping Really?
A mathematical model built on hopes, estimates, and wishful thinking
A spreadsheet ritual to make us feel more in control than we actually are
A planning tool used to predict collaboration instead of enabling it
A common way to confuse busyness with value
It’s not evil.
It’s just not that useful once the sprint hits reality.
🚀 What Happens When You Stop Obsessing Over Capacity?
You plan based on flow, not fictive math
You make space for learning, blockers, and actual thinking
People work together instead of maximizing individual utilization
Forecasting becomes about outcomes, not percentages
The team owns their pace, and adapts it
Also: you stop spending your Thursday afternoon debating how many hours fit in 64%.
☄️ What Happens If You Don’t?
Planning becomes a complex dance of percentages no one understands
You track individual availability like an air traffic controller with anxiety
Teams become overcommitted because the math "said they could"
People get burned out trying to live up to their predicted selves
Collaboration dies because everyone is “at capacity”
Eventually someone says:
“We planned based on the numbers.”
And someone else replies:
“Too bad the work didn’t care.”
🪐 What Happens If You Do It Wrong?
You estimate in hours, track in days, and deliver in confusion
You map 100% capacity and forget that humans need breaks, coffee, and sometimes naps
You optimize for efficiency and forget effectiveness
You use capacity to blame, not to learn
You spend more time updating the sheet than updating your product
Also: if your “full capacity” team is constantly missing goals…
you’re managing numbers, not people.
🌠 How to Plan Without Losing Your Mind (or Soul):
Plan in outcomes, not individual hours
Use historical throughput, not personal guesses
Leave room for real life (because it will happen)
Trust teams to self-manage. and talk about their limits
Focus on sustainable pace, not spreadsheet satisfaction
Treat capacity as a conversation, not a contract
Because the only thing more unpredictable than a sprint?
A sprint with capacity numbers someone’s afraid to challenge.
From the Guide:
“Capacity mapping is like forecasting gravity on Jupiter using a bathroom scale, impressive effort, wildly irrelevant.”