Capacity planning · Ott marketing

Bringing meaningful capacity planning back to the team.

After an acquisition merged people and ways of working, raw task counts could no longer explain workload. I helped the team choose a shared sizing model and designed the Smartsheet system that will turn two-week sprint data into practical workload decisions.

My contribution: Team discovery, capacity model, system design, and automation
Partners: Anne-Laure Starling and Cristina Windsor, Marketing Directors
Planning rhythm: Two-week sprints
Core tools: Smartsheet, Claude, GitHub

The planning model

Replace task counts with a shared measure of effort.

◷ Implementation in progress

PLAN THE EFFORT. NOT THE TASK COUNT.7 levels. One shared language.Two-week sprint cycles · Full adoption planned for early 2027

Conceptual system illustration

180collective planning points per sprint

2 weeksin each planning cycle

7task-size levels

3clear signals: under, at, over

The challenge

A task count was being mistaken for a workload.

The team had tracked capacity in earlier years, but the newer project system assigned neither hours nor points. After the acquisition brought new team members and different working methods together, workload could become badly skewed. Someone with 20 complex tasks might have more work than someone with 70 small ones.

The only dependable way to know whether someone was overloaded was to ask. That made it difficult to cap a sprint, plan the 2027 workload before new projects entered the system, or build evidence for future staffing decisions.

The constraintThe team did not want time sheets. But having no shared measure of effort was not working either.

The approach

Use the model the team could understand and trust.

Listen to the team

I gathered recurring concerns and included capacity planning in a broader survey about improvements to our Smartsheet project templates.

Let people choose

The team compared hours, points, and size-based options. They unanimously preferred familiar small-to-large labels with points attached.

Define fair baselines

We set different sprint capacities for individual contributors, leaders, managers, and part-time team members instead of treating every role as identical.

Account for real availability

Planned time away reduces a person’s available points for that sprint, keeping the comparison grounded in days actually available.

The system

Turn project-sheet inputs into visible planning choices.

At the task

Size the work where it already lives

Team members assign each task a size-and-point value in the project worksheet. No separate time-tracking process is required.

At the person

Compare assigned points with available capacity

A daily capacity log will show whether each person is under, at, or over the cap for the current sprint.

At the team

Make rebalancing actionable

The report and dashboard will help the team decide what to deprioritize, move, reassign, or clarify before overload becomes invisible.

Behind the scenes

Automate the aggregation

I use Claude to help translate the reporting logic into GitHub scripts intended to work around Smartsheet limitations and refresh the numbers daily once implemented.

Implementation progress

Implementation Progress & Expected Impact

Implementation milestone

Shared model agreed

Aligned the team on a shared seven-level effort model to replace misleading task counts.

Preparation in progress

Work sizing underway

The team is actively sizing work ahead of full adoption and has expressed confidence that individual capacity limits will improve visibility and control over sprint workloads.

Expected impact after adoption

Better workload decisions

Once implemented, the model is intended to support more informed workload distribution, task reassignment, and scheduling decisions.

Full adoption is planned for early 2027. The 180-point sprint baseline is a planning model, not a productivity result.

“If you confuse, you lose. The useful part is not simply a dashboard—it is a capacity model the team can use without friction and leadership can trust when planning the work.”

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