Capacity planning was carried out agency-wide using an Excel file maintained jointly by all project managers: one worksheet per team, listing all team members and their projects/tasks, with the required hours entered on a weekly or daily basis. Requirements were entered as estimates rather than based on actual effort; the allocation was constantly changing; and the file regularly crashed or produced calculation errors – meaning there was no reliable, up-to-date overview for project managers, team leads or management.

I rebuilt the capacity planning as a filter-based dashboard in Workfront. Estimated effort is recorded directly on the task in the project template and is automatically entered as a capacity requirement when a project is created (see the ‘Automated Milestone & Capacity Planning’ case study). Depending on requirements, it is possible to switch between trade-based and individual capacity. Building on this, I have created reports that automatically flag critical situations – such as overdue tasks, tasks without an assigned owner, or warnings about upcoming peak periods.