Glossary
What is a capacity line?
A team's honestly available capacity for a period, stated in FTE-months — the constraint that commitments are walked down against, in priority order, until it is spent.
The line is what converts a priority ordering into decisions. An ordering costs nothing — any number of items can be "P1" — but a line forces the next commitment to name what it displaces. Committing past the line is possible; what keeps the line real is that the overrun is made explicit and owned in the room, never absorbed silently.
Capacity line vs headcount vs gross capacity
Headcount is how many people a team has. Gross capacity is headcount multiplied by the months in the period. The capacity line is what is left of gross capacity once everything already spoken for is taken out: the support rotation, run-the-business work, booked leave, and a reserve for the interruptions that will arrive whether or not anyone plans for them. Only the line can be promised.
It is also per team. An organisation does not have one capacity line; each delivering team has its own, because a spare month of mobile capacity does not build a backend service.
Walking demands down the line: a worked example
A team of five, planning a quarter, has 15 FTE-months gross. Take out 3 for the support rotation, 1 for booked leave and 2 as an interruption reserve: the line is 9. Three demands are waiting in priority order, sized at 4, 3 and 3 FTE-months. The first is committed and 5 remain. The second is committed and 2 remain. The third needs 3, and the line is spent.
That moment is the point of the exercise. The third demand now needs a named decision rather than a hopeful yes: park it with a review date, decline it with a reason, displace the second one visibly, or commit it anyway with a recorded exception that says who accepts the overrun.
Common mistakes
Drawing the line at gross capacity, so every commitment inherits an overrun on day one. Pooling lines across teams into a single organisational number that no team can actually deliver against. Nudging the line up until the list fits — the most common mistake, because it costs nothing on the day. And treating the line as permanent: when someone leaves or the support load changes, redraw it, and re-read the commitments made against the old one.
Related terms
- FTE-month — One full-time person working for one month — a capacity unit that is comparable across teams and, where cost is recorded, is the multiplier a cost forecast would use.
- Allocation vs consumption — Allocation is what people are committed to; consumption is what they spent. Delivery governance measures allocation and deliberately does not measure consumption.
- Capacity planning — Establishing what each team can honestly promise for a period — gross FTE-months minus what is already spoken for — and committing demands against that line in priority order.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.
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