Jira Portfolio capacity planning use case

Question

I am currently working on a Jira Portfolio capacity planning use case. I would really appreciate insights or recommendations from jira/atlassian experts in the group.

Problem Statement:

We are looking to manage and report portfolio-level capacity in percentage(%) and/or hours(only planned, not actuals)  on both an annual and quarterly basis, leveraging Jira and Confluence.

I have explored the existing capacity features, but the challenge is achieving the required quarterly portfolio-level roll-up across MVPs, Programs and Epics, etc.

What are we trying to achieve?

1)View available vs. allocated capacity at portfolio level

2) highlight over allocation for example, exceeding 100%

3) Roll up capacity across the relevant Jira hierarchy.

I have tried a few approaches but haven’t yet achieved the desired outcome. Open to marketplace apps if there is a solution that can effectively address this use case.

Would appreciate any suggestions, recommended approaches, marketplace apps or similar implementations you have worked on.

Thanks in advance!

Project Commander · Answer

Hi Anil,

Josh has covered the hierarchy: with levels above Epic, Plans rolls planned hours up to each MVP and Program. Capacity won't roll up the same way. Estimates belong to work items, so they add up the hierarchy. Capacity belongs to people over time, so it doesn't.

That's why one quarterly percentage per Program misleads. A Program at 90% can hide a team at 140% beside one at 40%, and the 140% is what stops delivery. Roll demand up by Program, compare it with each team's capacity per quarter, and only then total. An over-100% flag means something at team level and gets averaged away above it.

You said you're open to apps, so I'll name mine and say I built it: Project Commander, on the Atlassian Marketplace. It shows each Jira project's remaining work as a percentage of the capacity left before its target date, red above 100%, and adds up each person's allocated share across projects, flagging anyone past 100%. It doesn't roll up through levels above Epic, so if MVP and Program must be the unit, Plans fits better.

Hong Quyen · Answer

Hi Anil,

For transparency, I’m part of the team behind Resource Planning for Jira. Our app supports cross-project resource allocation, availability and overload visibility, with allocation reports showing percentages, man-months, and start/end dates.

The part I’d like to clarify is your hierarchy roll-up. Do you need allocations linked directly to Jira Epics and automatically aggregated into MVPs/Programs, or would a quarterly summary grouped by projects be sufficient?

Our current reporting focuses on people and project allocations, so I wouldn’t want to suggest it covers your full use case without understanding that requirement.

Josh · Answer

Hi Anil, a few native pieces are worth lining up before you commit to an approach.

For the hierarchy, on Premium or Enterprise a Jira admin can add levels above Epic (for example Program and MVP) under Settings > Work items > Work type hierarchy. Plans then roll estimates up through those levels, so if planned hours live in Original Estimate on the epics' children, you can see totals per MVP or Program in the plan.

For capacity, Plans lets you set each team's capacity per sprint (Scrum) or per week (Kanban) and flags when scheduled work goes over it. That gives you the over-allocation warning, but at team and iteration level.

The honest gap is the portfolio view you described: there's no native report showing available vs allocated capacity as a percentage per quarter or year across all programs. Most teams end up exporting the plan and doing that roll-up in a sheet or a Confluence table.

If you want that per person and per period without the export, I work at Aneto and we build Hours Reports and Resource planner, which compares allocated with available hours and highlights over-allocation: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=Aneto%20Hours%20Reports