Shared working days for distributed teams

The most useful cross-border number is often not either team’s total. It is the number of dates when every required team can work together.

Shared working days help identify opportunities for design reviews, approvals, integration testing, releases, and customer handoffs. A team may have capacity on a local holiday while the partner team is unavailable, so the shared window can be smaller than either team’s individual count.

A practical planning sequence

  1. Enter the same planning-increment dates for every team.
  2. Select each team’s country and review the weekend rules.
  3. Subtract common public holidays and inspect named holiday dates.
  4. Use the shared delivery count for coordination-dependent work.
  5. Adjust for time-zone overlap, leave, support rotations, ceremonies, and company closures.
Do not treat shared days as total capacity: a shared date may still be unavailable because of leave, meetings, production support, or a local working-hours mismatch.

Shared days and capacity are different

Individual working days estimate the time available in each team’s own location. Shared working days estimate the calendar intersection. Person-days then add team size, availability, and focus assumptions. Story points remain a team-specific historical measure and should not be calculated from a generic shared-day multiplier.

How to use the result

Use the capacity planner to compare up to ten teams, review the shared delivery dates, and estimate core-hours overlap. Use the holiday impact guide to turn a difference into a delivery conversation. Last reviewed: October 2026.