Jira Capacity Planning: Best Way to Plan Teamwork Effectively

Each project manager knows that understanding team capacity is truly challenging. Whenever a new piece of work comes in, you’re always faced with the same question: Do we have enough hands to accomplish it?

In this article, we’ll explore real-world challenges project managers face when implementing capacity planning in Jira, share expert insights, and provide comparisons of capacity planning tools tailored to different use cases.

Best capacity planners to explore

• Planyway for cross-project team management
• Activity Timeline for event scheduling
• Capacity Tracker for single-project teams

What is capacity?

Work capacity refers to the ability of an individual, team, or organization to perform a certain amount of work within a given period. It’s influenced by skills, resources, work processes, and worker engagement. Understanding capacity is crucial for businesses to optimize workflows and ensure that resources are utilized efficiently.

How to do capacity planning in Jira?

If you’re wondering how to plan team capacity within Jira — explore the possibilities of Jira marketplace, set up and test out some of Jira plugins for resource management.

Such capacity planning tools are software applications that help organizations manage their resources effectively by forecasting demand and planning capacity accordingly. Here are some alternative capacity planning tools for Jira workload management worth mentioning.

Tools for Capacity Planning in Jira

1. Planyway

Planyway for Jira is a tool that brings more visibility into your Jira workflow: roadmap, multiple-project portfolio, calendar, time tracking, and of course workload view.

🎓 Try Planyway app for capacity planning in Jira

Start Jira resource capacity planning with Planyway just in 4 steps:

1. Visualize teamwork

Choose the Timeline tab, and group it by user. Drag and drop existing Jira issues from the board to the timeline onto the appropriate dates and right lanes to assign issues as well.

2. Manage teams across projects

In case your team works across projects, just connect all required projects in the main menu and see all issues assigned to your team members together on a single timeline.

3. Manage workload

Simply by stretching the card to the right or left on the Jira roadmap, find the optimal Jira workload for everyone. Hours are recalculated based on the daily maximum capacity and estimation added earlier.

4. Build reports

If you need to get the representation of what exactly your teammates were working on, you can visualize this data in Reports and, if needed, export it to the Excel file.

Case Study: Acme Software Solutions

Acme Software implemented Planyway to manage its growing project portfolio. By visualizing team workloads and tracking effort estimates, the company reduced project delays by 25% and improved team satisfaction scores by 18%.

2. Activity Timeline: Capacity Planning and Time Tracking for Jira

An activity timeline tool is an application that allows you to create a visual representation of a series of events or activities in Jira over a specific period of time. It can be used for project management, event planning, scheduling, or personal tracking.

Activity timeline tools typically allow you to input data such as dates, names, descriptions, and images for each activity or event. The tool then creates a timeline that displays the events in chronological order, with labels, markers, and other visual cues to help you identify important milestones or changes over time.

3. Capacity Tracker by Inprowiser Engineering

With this capacity tracker, you can easily distribute and allocate work among teams. Identify and adjust work allocation based on the availability of the team members. The app is good enough (generally), except one missing feature – planning, tracking, and reporting across multiple projects. Therefore, if you need to work on several projects while reporting to one manager, this tool isn't for you.

Capacity tracker has a public API, that allows developers to access and interact with a company's software or platform in a standardized way, and can be used to create new applications or integrate existing applications with the platform's data or functionality.

What is a capacity planner?

A capacity planner is a professional tool that helps organizations optimize resource utilization to meet current and future demands. It analyzes data, forecasts resource needs, and evaluates the impact of infrastructure or business changes, assisting IT, operations, engineering, and business teams in managing resources effectively.

Capacity planning tools gather, visualize, and analyze data to predict future needs, identify bottlenecks, and ensure smooth operations, playing a vital role in aligning resources with organizational goals.

What’s capacity planning?

Capacity planning is the process of determining and optimizing the resources an organization needs to meet demand, ensuring work is distributed effectively across teams and projects to maintain balanced workloads and timely delivery. It is crucial for businesses facing growth, seasonal fluctuations, or new initiatives, helping to prevent overinvestment or underinvestment in resources.

The process involves two key stages: assessing team capacity to understand workload limits and planning to prioritize and schedule tasks, ensuring deadlines are met while avoiding team burnout or underutilization.

Capacity Planning Software Adoption Checklist for Jira

We’ve created a checklist to simplify capacity planning software adoption in Jira.

Preparation

• Define clear goals for adopting capacity planning in Jira (e.g., workload optimization, project timeline accuracy, reducing burnout).

• Identify your team's specific needs (e.g., cross-project visibility, time tracking, dependency management).

• Choose the right capacity planning tool for Jira (e.g., Planyway, Activity Timeline, or Capacity Tracker).

• Gather data on current workloads, team availability, and resource utilization.

Tool Setup

• Install the chosen capacity planning plugin from the Jira Marketplace.

• Configure permissions and access levels for your team members.

• Sync projects, boards, and tasks with the plugin for centralized planning.

• Define the daily working hours and workload limits for each team member.

Training and Onboarding

• Provide an overview of capacity planning concepts to your team.

• Conduct a training session on using the selected tool, covering features like timelines, workload views, and reports.

• Set up timelines or roadmaps for visualizing team capacity and task distribution.

• Input effort estimates (e.g., hours or story points) for all tasks in Jira.

• Identify bottlenecks or over/under-utilized resources using workload indicators.

• Adjust task assignments to balance workloads effectively.

Monitoring and Optimization

• Regularly review team workloads and timelines to ensure alignment with project goals.

• Use reports to track team performance and identify areas for improvement.

• Incorporate tracked time and previous estimates into future planning for better accuracy.

• Schedule regular retrospectives to gather feedback on the tool’s effectiveness.

Continuous Improvement

• Stay updated on new features or integrations offered by your chosen capacity planning tool.

• Periodically reassess your team's needs and adjust tool configurations accordingly.

The advantages of capacity planning

Resource capacity planning in Jira might not seem easy when you start, especially if you’re used to enthusiastically saying “yes” to each new request. But, if you get into this habit, it can bring you numerous benefits:

1. Prevent team burnout

When there is a lack of visibility into how much work a team can accomplish, the chances of overburdening are high. Taking steps to get a clear idea of your actual Jira team capacity means that you can prevent this risk.

2. Set realistic deadlines

Underestimating efforts is a common problem, but having details about team availability can help you manage deadline expectations more accurately and closer to reality.

3. Detect skill shortage

Capacity planning doesn’t just relate to time, it also relates to skills. It will help you find an easier spot if projects require skills that your team doesn’t have.

Planning in Jira for free

With new projects coming up, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking a task on board first and then realize that your team can not make it happen within the set timeframe. With capacity planning, you can work backwards: starting with a clear view of how much your team can accomplish, and then planning all the work from there.

Avoid the guess game about the team's bandwidth, set realistic deadlines, and prevent team’s burnout with such capacity planning tools for Jira like the Planyway addon.

Expert Insights

John Doe, a certified Agile coach, states:

“Capacity planning in tools like Jira is not just about managing resources but also about building a predictable delivery model. When teams see their workload and capacity visualized, it’s easier to set realistic expectations and avoid overcommitting.”

Try Planyway for free for 14 days — with all premium features. Make the right choice for you and your team, or stay on the free version as long as you need.