Capacity Planning
The practice of matching available team hours to committed project work, typically on a rolling 4–8 week horizon, so overcommitment is visible before it becomes a crisis.
Full definition
Capacity planning is the operating discipline of forecasting committed work against available people, on a rolling horizon, so staffing gaps and overloads are visible in advance. At founder-led agencies, it typically replaces the founder's mental model of 'who has room this week' with an explicit weekly view: what projects are active, what hours each person is committed to, what incoming work requires staffing, and where the gaps or overloads are. Capacity planning is an input to resource deployment; it is not the same as project scheduling.
When this matters
Capacity planning becomes essential the moment an agency runs more than 3 concurrent projects across more than 5 people. Below that threshold a founder can hold the picture in their head; above it, it starts to break.
Related terms
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