Sprint Capacity Planning

This guide explains how to use Rally for effective sprint planning, ensuring balanced workload distribution while keeping your Jira board current and your team aligned.

1

Preparation and setting up your session

Start by creating a Rally session with the Sprint items you need to assign.

These items should ideally have story point estimates from a previous ALIGN session.

If they don't, you can quickly add estimates right in the assignment session.

After creating your session, choose the ASSIGN template and select "Sprint" then enter your sprint duration to help Rally calculate team capacity accurately.

2

Capturing Team Availability

Your team members can begin the session by entering their available hours for the sprint.

This creates a baseline for workload distribution.

Each participant then provides time estimates for tasks, helping create a realistic view of sprint capacity.

3

Monitoring Team Bandwidth

The Assignment Health dashboard shows real-time insights into your team's capacity as you plan the sprint.

You'll see a clear picture of available hours, current allocations, and potential overload situations.

4

Planning Your Sprint

With visibility into both team capacity and task estimates, you can start assigning sprint items.

The Assignment Health indicators help ensure you're creating a balanced sprint that respects team bandwidth while meeting delivery goals.

5

Finalizing Sprint Assignments

Rally updates Jira automatically as you finalize task assignments.

Team members receive notifications about their sprint commitments, and all assignments appear in your Jira sprint board.

Note: Having refined, estimated items from previous ALIGN sessions helps ensure more accurate sprint planning.

Best Practice: Review the Assignment Health dashboard regularly during planning to maintain healthy workload distribution across your sprint team.