A manager of a six-person team says yes to a new request on Monday because it sounds small. On Wednesday another one arrives, also small. By Friday two people are working in the evening, a customer reply is late, and nobody can say exactly when the trouble started.
Small teams rarely have a planning department. They have a shared sense that "we are busy". That is not enough to decide whether to accept the next request. A short weekly capacity check replaces the feeling with a few numbers, and it takes about ten minutes.
Why a feeling is not enough
When everyone is busy, all work looks equally urgent and the loudest request wins. The people who quietly absorb extra work are the ones who never complain, and they are often the ones you most want to keep.
The problem is not lack of effort. It is that the workload exists only in people's heads. A manager cannot weigh a new request against work they cannot see.
The workload view
You need one list, in one place, that everyone can see. A shared spreadsheet, a board or a simple ticket queue is enough. For each item write:
- what it is, in one line,
- who is doing it,
- a rough size in hours, not in days or weeks,
- when it is due,
- whether it is committed (promised to someone) or only wished for.
Do not try to capture everything down to the quarter hour. Include recurring work, such as support, reporting and meetings, because it takes real time. If you already run a shared mailbox as a ticket queue, much of the list exists already and you only need to add sizes.
Three numbers
Once the list exists, three numbers per person tell you most of what you need.
- Available hours this week. Start with the working hours and subtract holidays, leave, training and standing meetings.
- Committed hours this week. The sum of the sizes of the committed items due or in progress this week.
- Open items. How many things the person has started and not finished.
The first two give a ratio. If committed hours are close to available hours, the person has no room for anything new, however small it looks. The third number catches a different problem: someone with a reasonable ratio but twelve open items is switching between tasks all day and finishing little.
Do not plan for one hundred percent
A week has 40 hours on paper, but a person almost never has 40 hours for planned work. Messages, questions from colleagues, small fixes and unexpected requests take a share. A sensible working assumption for many teams is to plan around 70 percent of available hours and leave the rest as a buffer.
This is a rule of thumb, not a standard. Measure your own for a month: compare what people planned with what they actually finished, and adjust the percentage. A team that handles a lot of incoming requests may need a larger buffer; a team on long projects may need less.
The ten-minute check
Hold it at the same time each week, for example Monday morning, standing or on a short call. One person owns it, usually the team lead, and the order is always the same:
- Review the list and remove what is done.
- Update sizes where they turned out wrong.
- Look at the three numbers for each person.
- Name anyone above the line and decide what moves: a due date, an owner or the scope.
- Note any new requests waiting for a decision.
If the check regularly takes longer than ten minutes, the list is too detailed. Cut it back.
Saying no, or later
A new request arrives. Before answering, look at the list. There are really four possible answers:
- Yes, now, because someone has room.
- Yes, later, with a date, because the capacity exists next week or next month.
- Yes, instead of, which means something already on the list moves or is dropped.
- No, with a short reason.
The strongest argument is the visible list. "We are too busy" invites debate. "Anna has 30 committed hours against 28 available, and this would be a ninth open item; we can start it on the 14th, or we can stop the report redesign to start now" is hard to argue with. It also shifts the conversation to what matters more, which is the real decision.
Be careful with tone. Say what you can do, not only what you cannot. A person who hears "not this week, but the 14th" usually accepts it. A person who hears only "no" looks for another route, often straight to the person who finds it hardest to refuse.
Who decides when requests collide
Capacity checks fail when two senior people send requests and the team lead is left to guess which is more important. Agree in advance who sets priority between teams or between managers, and who the team lead goes to when the list does not fit. It is the same question as in any priority queue for incoming work: someone has to be allowed to order the work.
If the same handoffs keep adding hidden work, a short exercise to find the three slowest handoffs can show where the extra hours come from.
Reading the pattern over time
After a month you have four or five snapshots. Look for three patterns. One person is always above the line, which means the work is not shared fairly or one skill is a bottleneck. The whole team is above the line every week, which means the commitments are larger than the team, and the conversation is about scope or hiring, not about working harder. Sizes are often wrong in the same direction, which means your estimates need a correction factor.
These patterns are far more useful in a conversation with management than "we are overloaded".
Common mistakes
- Counting 100 percent of the calendar as available.
- Leaving recurring work and meetings off the list.
- Sizing in days instead of hours, so small items disappear.
- Accepting requests in the corridor, outside the list.
- Using the check to judge people instead of the plan.
- Making the list so detailed that nobody updates it.
Summary
A weekly capacity check is a visible list, three numbers per person and ten minutes of attention. It lets a small team answer new requests with yes, later, instead of or no, based on facts rather than mood. Start next Monday with the work already in progress, plan for about 70 percent of available hours, and adjust after a month of real data.
Sources
- Our related articles linked above.
- The 70 percent planning share and the time frames are working practices for small teams, not a formal standard; adjust them to your size and type of work. No client results or market figures are claimed in this article.
