How to Measure Team Workload Accurately

Resource planning separates successful firms from those constantly scrambling to meet deadlines 📊 Most finance teams operate in reactive mode, putting out fires instead of preventing them. I've worked with dozens of clients who struggle with this exact problem. They're always stressed, always behind, and wondering why profitability suffers despite working harder than ever. ➡️ CAPACITY PLANNING FOUNDATION You know what I've learned after years of helping firms optimize their resources? It all starts with forecasting your hours correctly. See, when you can predict workload based on historical data and upcoming client needs, you avoid that feast or famine cycle that absolutely crushes profitability. Monthly recurring revenue clients need consistent attention too. Don't make the mistake I see so many firms make by forgetting about them during busy season. Client volume scaling requires a completely different approach. Growing your client base means different staffing patterns and retention strategies. Plan resources based on both current clients and realistic growth projections. ➡️ BUDGET VS ACTUALS Track your planned versus actual resource utilization religiously. Variance patterns tell you exactly where your assumptions are off. Sometimes it's scope creep eating up resources. Sometimes it's inefficient processes slowing everyone down. Sometimes it's just unrealistic estimates from the start. Your resource planning gets better when you learn from what actually happened versus what you expected. Create accountability across your team so everyone understands how their work impacts overall capacity. ➡️ TIME TRACKING Without accurate time data, resource planning becomes pure guesswork. Monitor your billable versus non-billable ratios to understand true capacity. That administrative time still consumes resources and needs planning. Track project profitability in real-time so you can course-correct before it's too late. Waiting until project completion to assess profitability costs money. Use time data to identify productivity bottlenecks. Maybe certain work takes longer than expected, or specific team members need additional training. ➡️ STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES Document your repeatable processes and workflows. This dramatically reduces training time for new team members. Consistent processes mean more predictable resource requirements. When everyone follows the same approach, you can actually forecast capacity accurately. ➡️ CLIENT SCOPE DEFINITION Clearly define project boundaries upfront. Scope creep destroys resource planning faster than anything else I've seen. Set realistic client expectations from the start and stick to them. When clients want additional work, have a system to price and resource it properly. === Resource planning isn't glamorous work, but it's what separates profitable firms from those working harder for less money. What's your biggest resource planning challenge?

Can your team answer these two questions? 1) Once we commit to doing something, how long does it take for us to finish it? 2) Once we start working on something, how long does it take for us to finish it? The first measures your team’s lead time, and the second measures cycle time. They’re very different, even though many think they’re synonymous. If you can’t answer these two questions, it makes it nearly impossible to answer questions like: 🔵 Will we be able to hit promised milestones and releases? 🔵 How long will it take to deliver that new high-priority feature? 🔵 How long until that new art asset is ready for the marketing campaign?  🔵 How long will the customer wait for their support request to be answered? and most important… ⭐️ How can we improve, remove bottlenecks, and deliver faster? To start measuring lead times and cycle times: 1 - Determine and visualize your workflow in a tool like Trello, Asana, or Favro 2 - Be sure to have a clear Commitment point (Selected, Ready, Committed, etc.) and a clear In-progress point (Developing, Doing, Resolving, etc.) 3 - Determine when something is actually Done and delivered to the “customer” in your flow 4 - Measure the time it takes for each item (card) to go from Committed to Done’and Started to Done (a good tool will track this for you) 5 - Visualize your lead and cycle times in a scatter plot, histogram, and/or control chart From there, you can determine averages and probable ranges of how long your team will take to deliver something new. Your team will then be well equipped to: ✅ Better forecast delivery dates for batches of work ✅ Accurately answer: when will this be done? ✅ Begin reducing lead times and cycle times ✅ Start building a more predictable flow Remember, the difference between your lead times and cycle times can be huge, so it’s critical to understand the difference and measure both.

We've helped 3,000 different agencies get a crystal-clear view of their team's workload—helping them better utilize their team's time and significantly increase utilization (by more than 29% 😮). Here's our formula for getting a more accurate workload view in your project management system. 1️⃣ Build your processes and save them as templates If you build process templates for everything that you do and leverage time estimates, due dates, and assignees, you'll get much more accurate tasks in your system to actually populate your workload view. 2️⃣ Every task must have a time estimate Workload views are built on time estimates. Every task should have a time estimate on it. 3️⃣ Your task's due dates should be the DO dates When the due date is the DO date (the date it should be worked on and completed), your time estimate will only fall on one date, providing a much more accurate time estimate for a specific task. 4️⃣ Every task should only have ONE assignee Having two assignees on a task can sometimes split the time estimate among assignees or add the time estimate to each assignee's workload, which may not be realistic. Not to mention, having two assignees on a task leads to tasks slipping through the cracks, so just don't do it. 5️⃣ Get rid of start dates Because your due dates are DO dates, you shouldn't need start dates. Your tasks should be broken up into smaller bite-sized pieces. Start dates just split up time estimates evenly across days, which isn't always realistic. 6️⃣ Remap overdue tasks Make sure your team is moving tasks when they fall overdue. If they have a bunch of overdue tasks that still need to be done, these won't reflect accurately on the workload view if their due dates are in the past. 7️⃣ Optimize your process templates monthly Make sure you set up a process for optimizing your process templates. Create dashboards to help you compare time tracked to time estimates. You want to use data to get your time estimates as accurate as possible. 8️⃣ Live by the rule of "if it's not in our PM system, it doesn't exist" Every task needs to be in the PM system to make your workload view accurate. This includes meetings, professional development, etc. 9️⃣ Document OOO time You should be creating tasks in your PM system that fill up someone's workload when they are out of the office and can't take on any work. 🔟 Hire a PM champion to audit your workspace daily Every task needs to have an assignee, due date, and time estimate to populate the workload view. Without these ingredients, tasks won't show up, and your workload view will not be accurate. Hire a champion to QA your workspace regularly. If you use ClickUp, you can create an amazing QA view that helps you audit your workspace and get needed details on all tasks easily. ---- 👉 I've got a full training and PDF guide on this. Want it? Let me know in the comments and I'll send it your way. ---- #projectmanagement #agencylife #operations #workload