Agile pods are small, custom agile teams that provide an effective way to manage engagements where backlog items vary in the type/scope of work and that potentially require different skillsets from one another. A key challenge of using this approach is creating realistic forecasts of when development of individual backlog items is bound to commence and finalize (deliver) so customer expectations can be set realistically. 

In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting a method that automatically assigns pods to sprints so resource utilization is maximized.