Sprint Capacity vs Velocity: What's the Difference?

What is sprint capacity?

Sprint capacity is the team's actual availability for delivery work during a sprint.

• Working days
• Team availability
• Leave
• Holidays
• Meetings
• Other planned activities
• Time available for delivery work

A team of five people in a 10-day sprint has a theoretical capacity of:

5 × 10 = 50 person-days

If people are away, in meetings or doing support work, the real capacity is lower.

What is velocity?

Velocity measures how much work the team has historically completed in previous sprints.

Velocity is useful as a historical signal. It is not a productivity score and it should not become a target.

The key difference

Simple example

A team normally completes around 30 points per sprint. In the next sprint, a key developer is on leave and there are extra meetings.

The team's capacity is lower than usual. If it assumes the same point total without considering the change, the sprint plan becomes unrealistic.

Capacity gives context for interpreting velocity. The two are complementary rather than interchangeable.

When each metric is useful

Use capacity when planning what the team can realistically do in the next sprint.

Use velocity when reviewing what the team has typically delivered over recent sprints.

A good sprint plan weighs both. One tells you what is available. The other tells you what the team has done before under comparable conditions.

Do not convert capacity into story points automatically

A common mistake is to say: we have 40 person-days, therefore we can take 40 story points.

Story points and person-days measure different things. Points capture the size and complexity of the work. Capacity captures time available.

They should be used together not treated as the same unit.