In business, we can identify several critical resources that determine the growth of your business. One of the most important is capacity, i.e., how much you can do in a given time. Such an important factor cannot be left unchecked, which is why many capacity management tools have been developed. But how to choose the best one?

In this article you will learn:

Capacity management is not a simple task, mainly because this one factor consists of several others interacting with each other. The number of employees, their time, availability, and competencies – each of these data influences the capacity of your company. This is why capacity planning tools are important.

This isn’t easy to comprehend with just ten employees. And what about when you have 100 or 200 people in your organization? To avoid bottlenecks, chaos, and frustration, you need the support of a dedicated application – especially battlefield from each member of the resource planning process.

The fundamental role of resource capacity and capacity planning tools

Balancing between available resources (employees) and project or client demands – for many, is the essence of capacity planning (or capacity management, if you like) in project management. The importance of capacity planning is a result of its strong connection with other project management areas: time, team, work, and project resource management. But let’s begin with a general question about the capacity.

Capacity is defined as the ability to achieve, store or produce. For an organization, capacity would be the ability of a given system to produce output within the specific time period. 

“Ability to achieve” seems to be the essential question of capacity planning, especially if we compare it with the definitions below. Trying to give a very good, justified answer to the question “do we have an ability to achieve?” never lets up and is continuously inspiring to make optimizations, analyses, and so on. This is why capacity planning tools can be helpful.

Capacity planning tool

Skills-based resources searching [Source: Teamdeck – Resource Management and Capacity Planning Tool]

To have full knowledge of whether your company or a particular employee has enough hard and soft competencies that won’t let you down – that will be defined as the “ability to achieve” – you must be pretty close to her/him.

Time spent on given tasks, availability or maturity, and expected experience in a given field – that’s a few criteria taken into account during the resource capacity planning process during which you’ll try to scope out whether a resource is a reason to think that indicated employee, or your team, or company has an “ability to achieve”, especially with capacity planning tools.

Definition of capacity planning and importance of capacity planning tools

To make it harder, all we know is that we’re in the business environment. So time isn’t the one and only indicator determining your decisions. And according to our competitor – the capacity planning tool vendor – which we agree with:

Capacity planning is the management process that ensures your organization has the skills and resources it needs to complete projects on time, on budget, and to customer expectations. 

This definition highlights that accurately skilled resources (employees) have to meet 3 challenges: (limited) time, (limited) budget, and client’s expectations (in other way, project demands). Or, in another way, those skills have to be good enough to help solve mentioned challenges. And the role of someone responsible for capacity planning is to ensure the accurate number of accurately skilled employees. In connectoin with, capacity planning tools are important.

Capacity planning and importance of capacity planning tools

Part of the capacity planning process is actually identifying what we have and how fast and where we can get accurate resources.

Capacity planning is a process that identifies whether or not you have the resources and skills to do the work, or the supply to meet the demand. 

As we see, capacity management is not a simple task, mainly because this one factor consists of several others interacting with each other. The number of employees, their time, availability, productivity, utilization, and hard and soft competencies – each of these data influences the capacity of your company. This is why best capacity planning tools can help.

This is difficult to comprehend with just 5 employees. And what about when you have 15, 35, or 50 people in your organization?

Top Resource Capacity Planning Tools and project management

Maybe it wasn’t mentioned above – the authors of this article are people from the software house. Each below-located resource capacity planning tool was checked by us – by CEOs, project managers, developers, marketers, etc. Some of them when we were part of the current company and some at previous stages of our careers.

Capacity planning tool Teamdeck.io – Resource Management and Capacity Planning Software

Price: $ 3.99 / Full Member / monthly

Resource capacity planning tools help with checking team's workload and project planning

Team’s availability team utilization overview in Teamdeck.io – resource management tool with resource capacity planning functions.

Pros of resource management tool Teamdeck.io

Cons of resource management tool Teamdeck.io

Float – Well-known Resource Management Platform and capacity planning software

Pricing: $12.5 for Resource planning + time tracking per person

Float is a popular project management software with task management feature

Pros of Float project management tool

Cons of Float project management tool

Float give deep insight into each team member of a project team

Float is a very recognizable project management software that also helps with resource capacity planning.

Capacity planning software ProjectCOR – Project Management Software Empowered by AI

Pricing: $40 per user per month

Projector resource capacity planning software powered by artificial intelligence

ProjectCOR – an app for managing a team’s capacity, or resource management.


Pros of ProjectCOR – project management software

Cons of ProjectCOR – project management software

Available capacity in PROjector

 

Features to Consider When Researching Resource Capacity Planning Tools

Easy to use

The UX is often the reason why some of them are rejected just after trial by project managers.
Anyone – privately and in business – use many apps. In business, depending on the job position, we use many interfaces. That makes habits. And this is a reason why a resource capacity planning tool’s functions are the source of irritation.
So take into account whether the capacity planning tool contains only really useful functions, whether the interface is understandable for anyone in a company, whether it has a high level of automation and whether it is flexible enough to respond to the specific needs of your company. And – last but not least – get to know, will the tool be still useful if your company structure or business goals will change.

Custom availability.

In today’s business, it’s increasingly rare to have a standard working model, in the office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. People work different hours, part-time, in different time zones.

Custom availability as important feature to manage resource allocation

Resource availability management is much easier with customized settings. [Screen from software for capacity planning]

These variables and settings are critical to accurately calculate the capacity, so the ideal tool must have the ability to customize the availability of every employee, and whenever is needed. It is also important for the users of capacity planning tools to be able to edit their availability and working hours whenever it changes.

Reporting

Some of the capacity planning software providers have many reports to offer, but only some of them are customizable.

Companies use different metrics (capacity planning tools) for measuring the effectiveness of the business depending on the industry or company structure. Many system providers offer predefined reports, which are – we can say – an integral part of the offer…so integral that it cannot be changed or, even worse – cannot be adjusted to the expectations of project teams.
So, watch out for capacity planning tool vendors that offer reports that not only fit your expectations but also aren’t open to changes while your organization is growing. Are the reports customizable enough? Can they be shared and exported? It is easier to develop good practices in a company to find weak and strong points if you can analyze the data. An ideal tool should have rich reporting functionality.

Capacity overview

In the case of a capacity plan, effective capacity planning and/or capacity planning strategy transparency is critical.
Access to the data using capacity planning tools should allow one to focus on a small period but also get a perspective over a wider date range. Team leaders and project managers plan the engagements of their team in relation to the skillset required but also the tentative or unconfirmed projects.
Also, the visibility of new hires and when they are joining the company and are available for work is important. The work of different departments and teams is closely connected, so the tool you choose should provide insight into all the key information. Especially the data from the sales department.

Tags

For capacity estimation, not only time and number of employees are essential, but also their competencies.

Tags in Teamdeck - the resource availability solution for project management.

Tags management in Teamdeck.io – the capacity management software.


How exactly does capacity management software make the process more efficient? 

Capacity planning tools advertise themselves as one that “Optimises your workflow”, “Takes your organization to a whole new level”, and “Allows you to achieve results like never before”. These are all nice-sounding slogans, but let’s get down to business. What will capacity planning tools REALLY give you?

Resource utilization view – view to anyone in the company


Thanks to capacity planing tools you will be able to see what each employee, team, and department is currently doing and how much they have to do. This will help you decide who to assign more tasks to in order not to lead to a situation when and some people will be overloaded with work and the rest will have too few responsibilities.

Notifications – about everything or just selected issues


The situation with capacity is very dynamic. Holidays, task completion, new projects, new employees. These are very important factors influencing your work planning decisions, therefore it would be very difficult for you to do it effectively without sufficient knowledge.
The capacity planning software will send you current notifications about changes or potential bottlenecks in your company. Of course, for many capacity planners, it’s very important the resource management tool allows one to decide which notification should be turned on or turned off.

Timesheets – home much time was spent on a particular task


This function of capacity planing tools allows you to monitor how much time your employees spend on particular tasks, whether they have some space or, on the contrary, do overtime. This knowledge is vital for you to estimate team capacity, and decide which projects and departments need more support and who can be assigned new tasks.

Status of the projects – which one are close to the end


Projects in each company have different priorities and deadlines. As a project manager, you surely have to decide more than once what is the most important at the moment and needs all hands on deck to fulfill the contract. The capacity planning tool will allow you to track the status of your projects and allocate resources according to your needs.

Information – the source of optimization

You can’t improve something or maintain good strategies by capacity planing tools if you don’t know if they are effective. And not everything can be deduced from simple observation. One of the most important functions of the capacity planning tool is to provide you with data on key metrics related to work planning. These include:

Comparison of capacity and demand

I.e. your company’s capacity vs. its needs.

Resource utilization

I.e. how much of your organization’s potential is being used, whether any competencies or resources are missing or even too many.

Forecasts

I.e. predictions of how your capacity will look in the future based on the information you introduce (planned projects, upcoming events, new recruitment, etc.).

Team specification

Shows which persons are assigned to a given project, their availability, position, and competencies.

Capacity planning process – step by step

We have already discussed exactly how to choose the best capacity planning tool and how they help our business. A good tool will do almost all the dirty work for you, but to get the most out of it you first need to understand the capacity planning process. We will now discuss it step by step.

Step 1 – analyze the current situation

The starting point for working with capacity planning tools on any process in an organization is to know what it currently looks like. Only then can you assess the strengths and weaknesses and decide what you need. Check what the capacity of your company is: how many employees you have, what their availability is, and what are their skills.

Step 2 – assess demand

Next, you need using capacity planning tools to assess your company’s need for different resources. By comparing this factor with your capacity you can easily see which resources you are lacking. This will be crucial in planning your growth strategy.

Step 3 – optimize the use of resources

At this stage, check whether all your company’s resources are planned most effectively. Maybe some employees have competencies that are not being used or certain processes are taking more time than they should, such as long meetings or revision sessions.

Step 4 – talk to your employees

As a manager of a large company, you are not able to know and notice everything and this is perfectly normal. However, it is useful to know as much as possible, and no one can tell you as much about your company’s processes as the employees who are involved in them. Do regular 1:1 meetings and get your team’s feedback on what frustrates them, makes things difficult, wastes their time, or is inefficient. Their perspective can have a huge impact on your strategy using capacity planning tools.

Step 5 – Develop a strategy

Now that you know what your organization has and needs, it’s time to plan solutions. Prepare a strategy outlining what needs to happen for the business to operate optimally. You may need to hire more people, assign employees to support other projects, or restructure certain processes. Also include key goals and milestones in your plan. This will make it easier for you to monitor your progress.

Step 6 – Optimization, continually, always!


Best practices for the capacity planning

Optimizing the capacity management process is a challenge that almost every company faces. Some will do better, others worse, because they will choose different ways to reach their goal, not always relevant to their company’s individual needs. However, we have some universal tips for you to become a master of capacity planning.

Capacity management is one of the most important processes in every organization. It allows you to increase efficiency, make better use of your budget, increase employee satisfaction and productivity, prevent potential bottlenecks and get to know your company’s workflow inside out. It is a lot of work, but its effects cannot be overestimated. And the market offers perfectly designed tools to make this process comfortable and intuitive.

 

Are you looking for well-recognizable capacity planning software at a reasonable price? 

Check Teamdeck.io resource capacity planning tool selected by Unit9, Human8, NTT Data

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