Adjust work to fit sprint capacity

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

Check your team's capacity after you've defined all the tasks for all the sprint backlog items. You can consider adding more items onto the sprint if your team is under capacity. If over capacity, you'll want to remove items out of the backlog.

Next, check whether any team member is under, at, or over capacity. Or, if someone hasn't even been assigned any work. Use the capacity bars to make these determinations. If you haven't yet set capacity for your team, do that now.

Use this article to learn how to:

• Adjust your sprint plan if your team is over or under capacity
• Load balance work across your team
• Quickly reassign tasks to another team member

Prerequisites

When you create a project or a team, backlogs get created automatically. Each team has access to their own product, portfolio, and sprint backlogs.

Prerequisite	Description
Project Administrator or Contributor member	You must be added to a project as a member of the Contributors or Project Administrators security group.
Stakeholder access	To add or modify work items, you must be granted Stakeholder access or higher. Users with Stakeholder access for public projects have full access to backlog and board features, like users with Basic access. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
Contributor member or Allow perms on	To view or modify work items, you must have your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set to Allow. For more information, see Set work tracking permissions.
Defined iterations	To use the Planning pane, your team administrator must define iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations.

Open a Sprint backlog for a team

1. From your web browser, open your team's sprint backlog. (1) Check that you've selected the right project, (2) choose Boards>Sprints, (3) select the correct team from the team selector menu, and lastly (4), choose Backlog.

   

   To choose another team, open the selector and select a different team or choose the Browse all sprints option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.

   

2. To choose a different sprint than the one shown, open the sprint selector and choose the sprint you want.

   

   The system lists only those sprints that have been selected for the current team focus. If you don't see the sprints you want listed, then choose New Sprint from the menu, and then choose Select existing iteration. For more information, see Define iteration (sprint) paths.

Check your team capacity

To view capacity charts, you'll want to turn Work details on for a sprint.

Move items out of a sprint

Move items from the sprint backlog back to the product backlog if your team is over capacity. This action resets the Iteration Path to the default set for your team. Or, you can move the item into the next sprint your team works in. All the tasks that you've defined for that item move with the backlog items.

Here we select two items at the bottom of the sprint backlog, open the action icon for one of the items, choose Move to iteration, and then select Backlog.

Tip

Optionally, you can open the Planning pane and drag a work item to the backlog or another sprint which reassigns all child tasks to the same iteration path. See Assign work to a sprint. Also, you can multi-select several items and drag them to the backlog or another sprint. Users with Stakeholder access can't drag-and-drop work items.

Balance work across the team

To quickly reassign tasks, drag the task onto the new assignee's capacity bar.

For example, here we reassign work from Raisa Pokrovskaya to Christie Church.

As you reassign tasks, capacity bars automatically update.

Next step

5. Share your sprint plan