Capacity for PROJECT based Work
Has anyone doing PROJECT-based work had to determine/manage their squad's capacity? Our squads do project-based work and each project has a specific hard deadline that we "drive" to (yes, like Waterfall). However, we manage all the work through Agile method using Stand Ups, Demos, Refinement, Story Sizing, etc. We need to figure out how much capacity each team has to see where we have resource availability. In our scenario, the story points are all different every Sprint as we base them off of how best to meet our deadline.
We are also trying to figure out Squad Velocity so if anyone has info on that, from a project-based perspective, I'd much appreciate it - thank you in advance.
In lean and agile practice, team members pull work to them as capacity becomes available. They then focus upon completing it early and often, thereby building predictability and flow. Any forecast made about where they are likely to be in an emergent body of work is then based on this hard evidence.
A lean and agile way-of-working should therefore be thought of as being predictable rather than predictive.
Why don't you look at flow metrics like throughput and cycle time? Daniel S. Vacanti wrote some good books on how to use valid metrics to predict future trends. They can be found at https://actionableagile.com/books/. Start with "When Will It Be Done" and see if the techniques described will work for you. I have had a lot of success using these techniques over trying to "predict capacity".
Thank you both! I'll look into "When Will It Be Done" for sure.