Capacity planning

Capacity planning is the matching of committed work against the people actually available to do it, over a defined period. Available means contracted hours minus absences and minus what is already promised elsewhere, which is where most plans quietly fail.

How is available capacity calculated?

Contracted hours for the period, minus holiday, sick leave and other absences, minus assignments already committed to other projects. What remains is what can be promised. Planning against contracted hours instead produces a plan that was never possible. When absences are kept in a separate calendar, this figure comes out too high.

What is the difference between capacity planning and resource allocation?

Capacity planning asks whether the work fits at all. Resource allocation decides who does which part of it. The first is a question about volume, the second about names, and doing the second without the first is how people end up booked twice.

How far ahead should capacity be planned?

Far enough to act on what it shows. If hiring takes three months, a plan that looks one month ahead cannot change anything. The horizon is set by the slowest lever available, not by the planning cycle. Capacity planning covers a defined period, and that period should reach past the slowest change the business can make.

What makes capacity planning unreliable?

Absences kept in a separate calendar, commitments made outside the plan, and effort estimates that were never compared against what the work actually took. Each of them makes the plan optimistic in the same direction. The result is a plan built on contracted hours rather than real availability, which is where most plans quietly fail.

troi plans against real availability. See resource planning.