Resource Planning

Resource planning

Planning by headcount over-predicts capacity, because people are partially allocated, take time to become productive, and lose substantial output to context switching between projects.

Method

1. Plan in realistic availability, not full time. Meetings, support, and interruptions consume a large share, and planning at full capacity guarantees the plan fails (see agent-capacity-planning).
2. Account for ramp-up. Someone new to a codebase is slower for weeks, and adding people to a late project usually makes it later.
3. Avoid splitting people across projects. Two half allocations produce well under one person's output because of switching cost.
4. Identify the specialists everything depends on. A single person on the critical path for several projects is the constraint, whatever the headcount says (see schedule-and-critical-path).
5. Plan for absence. Holiday, illness, and departure are certain in aggregate and should be in the plan rather than treated as exceptions.
6. Sequence rather than parallelise when capacity is tight. Finishing one project then starting the next delivers value sooner than running both slowly.
7. Re-plan when allocation changes. A plan built on an allocation that no longer holds is actively misleading.

Boundaries

Resource planning allocates capacity; it does not create it, and persistent overcommitment needs scope or staffing decisions. People are not interchangeable units, and treating them as such produces plans that fail on the specifics. Allocation decisions affect careers and morale (see agent-people-ops-desk).