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Project Management vocabulary · Resources & Team

Capacity

Meaning in project management, with examples

/kəˈpæsəti/nounCommon term

In project management, capacity means: The amount of work a person or team is able to do in a given period, considering working hours, holidays and other commitments.

In Turkish: kapasite, iş kapasitesi, müsaitlik

How it is used

Used in resource planning and sprint planning. A team can be at capacity (fully busy), over capacity or have spare capacity. People plan, check and free up capacity; “I don't have the capacity” is a polite way to say you are too busy.

Example sentences

  1. The design team is at full capacity until the end of the month, so the new banners will have to wait.

  2. With two people on leave, our capacity for this sprint is about 20% lower.

Common collocations

  • at full capacity
  • spare capacity
  • capacity planning
  • free up capacity
  • workloadThe amount of work a person or team has to do in a certain period of time.
  • resourceAnything a project needs to do its work, especially people, but also equipment, materials, money and time.
  • allocateTo decide that a certain amount of people, money or time will be used for a specific task, team or purpose.
  • velocityThe amount of work an agile team usually completes in one sprint, often measured as the total story points of the finished items.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Resources & Team

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