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Capacity Planning

Through capacity planning managers aim to determine the resources needed to meet organizational demands. This involves assessing the current team’s capabilities, headcount, workload, and availability, and planning for future needs based on projected workloads, business growth, and changes in demand.

Organizational Design and Capacity Planning

🧱Organizational Design involves structuring the organization to optimize efficiency and effectiveness in achieving strategic goals. The most common outputs are org charts with supplementary role descriptions.

🧩Capacity Planning ensures that the organization has the right number of people with the right skills available at the right time to meet workload demands. This typically translates to specific staffing plans for hiring additional headcounts where necessary.

While the two are connected, organizational design determines the structure within which capacity planning takes place.

Recommended Resources

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Your guide to resourcing discussions as a design manager: Jehad Affoneh’s guide covers many important bases for capacity planning. Align with your cross-functional peers on the upcoming work and don’t plan in your silo. Despite the “design manager” label, Jehad’s examples are clear enough for anyone to translate this guide to their specific domain. (10 min read)

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Hire More Designers, OK?: While this video may be a call to action to hire more designers, it’s also an insightful case study how ineffective capacity planning can hold back an organization. Note how just one person’s attempt at coping with workload demands can change an organization’s flow and ability to deliver value to customers. You may want to replace design with other jobs in your area and think through the consequences for your workplace. (6 min watch)