- Capacity planning time durations how to#
- Capacity planning time durations manual#
- Capacity planning time durations full#
This is more adaptable for businesses in varying markets.
Capacity planning time durations full#
Lag strategy – a more conservative approach than lead strategy, where you add capacity after only the organization is running at full demand.Lead strategy – this means adding capacity in anticipation of increased demand, with the goal of improving service level and reducing lead time.Consider the following approaches against your you team productivity, stakeholder input and market variables: While not always appropriate for smaller projects, having a capacity planning strategy can help you quickly adapt to meet any unforeseen changes during project execution. Step 4 – Consider a capacity strategy route
Capacity planning time durations manual#
As a result, it’s also far more accurate – capturing hidden project tasks that manual reporting frequently overlooks. It will automatically capture the time each team member spends on different tasks and tag them to the right project, providing a complete account of everything that goes into your projects. The fast approach outsources this task to an automatic project tracking tool. Employees need to think carefully about all the tools they use, since administrative project tasks – like emailing clients, traveling to meetings or having a quick project catch-up – often go unreported when using this method. The long-winded one requires you to ask each team member to write down everything they did on a previous project and estimate how long each individual task took, using the formula: X hours per week to do Y task. There’s a long-winded and fast approach to doing this. The best way of doing this is to look at data from similar past projects to understand the people, tasks and time you'll likely need. Step 1 – map resources required for all deliverablesįirstly, you need to get an overview of all the work required for your project. Using Timely as an example, here's how capacity planning works in five steps. At the backbone of all of that lies a solid project tracking tool, which helps project teams to keep the entire process efficient, accurate and effortless. Good capacity planning essentially boils down to effective knowledge sharing-keeping all team work visible, sharing insights and experiences from previous projects, synching schedules and monitoring workloads once projects go live. It's a fine balance to strike, which is where having a solid capacity planning process comes into its own. Conversely, assigning too little work to each employee is an inefficient use of resources, which will limit project profitability and disengage your employees. Assigning too much work to a select few team members is quick road to stress and burn out, which limits your productivity and the quality of project output. So, very simply: capacity planning is about understanding the limits of your available resources and working effectively within them.īut it’s also about distributing work intelligently to get the most from your team. That includes fitting new work harmoniously alongside existing plans, staff leave and client commitments. What is capacity planning?Īt its most basic, capacity planning means mapping out all the project work you have to do and calculating how long it’s going to take you, within the constraints of time and manpower.
Capacity planning time durations how to#
Here’s how to nail capacity planning every time in just five simple steps.
Without solid capacity planning, you can’t realistically hope to deliver projects on time without compromising others or exhausting your team.
Nonetheless, it’s essential you get it right. People rarely talk about capacity planning-perhaps because it’s seen as one of the least creative parts of project management.