Capacity planning
Estimating how much work a team can realistically take on in a Sprint, accounting for holidays, meetings, and other commitments.
What it means
Capacity planning is not a formal Scrum Guide concept, but a practical input to Sprint Planning: Developers consider actual available hours, factoring in time off, on-call duties, or organizational meetings, rather than assuming full-time availability.
Overlooking capacity is a common cause of overcommitment; a team that ignores an upcoming holiday will often carry incomplete work into the next Sprint.
Common mistakes
Capacity is typically combined with historical Velocity as a sanity check during Sprint Planning, rather than relied on alone.
Example
With two Developers on vacation next Sprint, the team plans for reduced capacity and selects fewer backlog items than usual.