Add buffers to adjust team capacity

You can allocate a buffer to a team to adjust the capacity of that team, prior to running a forecast for a PI. This is a useful feature for automatically removing capacity when non-work events such as training, education, conferences, collaboration activities, holidays, and more require a team to reduce their availability for an upcoming PI. This prevents known events from causing a team or program to be overloaded.

Note:  The Plan Capacity settings panel, where buffers are set, is only available on the Forecast page if the portfolio’s estimation system is configured to use T-Shirt size or Team/Member Weeks. This button and its settings panel will not be visible if points are set as the estimation system.

To set a buffer:

1. Navigate to the forecast page.
2. In the upper-right corner of the page, click Plan Capacity.
3. Select the PI and one or more programs from the corresponding drop-down menus.
4. Scroll down to the Buffer Management section.
5. Enter a name in the Buffer Name field.
6. Enter the number of member weeks or team weeks that will be removed from capacity in the Buffer field.
7. Select the team for the buffer, from the Team dropdown.
8. Click the plus icon. 

The buffer displays at the bottom of the Buffer Management section and is accounted for in the Total Buffer column of the Plan Capacity settings panel.