Capacity planning guide

The denominator is where capacity planning goes wrong. Headcount times a standard week is not availability, and the gap is bigger than most plans assume.

Start with real availability

Take contracted hours, subtract leave booked and public holidays, subtract the proportion that genuinely goes to meetings, support and internal work.

What remains is far below headcount times a standard week — commonly sixty to seventy per cent. Planning against the higher number is the single most common cause of a plan that was wrong on day one.

Capacity planning guide, in three chapters

Plan at the right grain

Person-level for the next few weeks, role-level beyond that. Detailed named allocation three months out is precision you do not have and will spend time maintaining.

And plan against skills, not just bodies. Two available people who cannot do the work are not capacity.

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Capacity planning guide, answered.

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