Our resource plan ignores support work. What should change?
Missing operational demandReserve capacity for recurring support and other unavoidable responsibilities before committing the remainder to projects. Use observed demand rather than assuming all contracted hours are available for delivery.
What to do now
- Measure recurring operational effort
- Identify predictable support peaks
- Set realistic project availability
- Review actual demand and adjust commitments
When to escalate
Escalate when
Support demand consumes the capacity needed for a critical commitment.
Who decides
The resource owner and project manager
Example
A systems engineer's project allocation excludes an agreed allowance for service support.
Mistake to avoid
Treating interruptions as personal inefficiency when they are part of the role.
Prevent a repeat
Review overload and bottlenecks at the person or skill level before adding more commitments.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Resources
- Tasks
- Timesheets
Compare available capacity, assigned task work and actual recorded effort using the enabled resource and timesheet views. See the platform
Related cases
- How do we plan capacity for unpredictable incidents?Variable demand planning
- How can we forecast staffing before every task is known?Early capacity uncertainty
- Vendor support excludes the integration we depend on. What should we do?Support boundary gap
- Demand is growing faster than the capacity plan. What should we review?Unmanaged service scaling risk