Balancing capability and capacity between individual and collective requirements #2
Labels
areas::processes::execution
Low-level task execution
areas::processes::planning
High-level strategy and planning
tasks::review::design
Setup, architecture or design patterns
tasks::review::performance
Resource usage and efficiency
This document provides a performance and structural review of planning and high-level management for capabilities and capacity.
First noted in #1, there are conceptual dynamics between "capability" and "capacity" that can be analyzed and understood to help make high-level planning more effective.
Defining terms
It's useful to think of these in terms as loosely interchangeable with their defining terms: [skills, knowledge, competence] for Capability, and [bandwidth, time resources] for Capacity.
Organizing and examining the terms
In this scenario, capability and capacity are each plotted on a 2D matrix with four quadrants, reflecting two contexts:
Each set is organized into 2d space with four quadrants each, as follows.
The Compass(es): Individually available capability/capacity
Table representation of the cartesian grid:
Increased risk of burnout, ticket debt
No misalignment, reliable, ideal
Risk of burnout realized, increased risk of mistakes and missed deadlines
Missing knowledge, slack, growth opportunities
The Map: Collectively required capability/capacity
Table representation of the cartesian grid:
Flexible to all change types, including non-trivial labor-consuming changes
With these in hand, we begin to examine how best to integrate the two in the context of mass collaborative planning and task execution.
Balancing
In short, the "compasses" tell you where the team is on a "map" of its capability and capacity-- it tells you what kind of changes they're collectively capable of making given each individuals' state.
In practice, balancing these helps planners answer the questions:
Insights for collective planning
Key points:
Proactive vs Reactive
The freedom or constraint to act proactively or reactively is a side-effect of improperly balancing capability and capacity.
When misalignments are persistent, the balance between proactive and reactive efforts skew in favor of reactive firefighting.
Conversely, when capacity and capabilities are balanced, the team has the flexibility to think ahead and proactively address issues before they happen.
To neatly tie this off, here's a brief analysis between "Proactive" and "Reactive":
- External events
- Anticipation of opportunities
- Urgent, disruptive
- Controlled, enables resource allocation
- Proactive bottlenecks and is bottlenecked by reactive.
- Proactive leads may be early
Planner/contributor engagement
This doesn't try to model engagement. It assumes full engagement from planners and contributors both, then examines how they can become misaligned.
If you need to model engagement, model it separately. However, keep in mind that ideal engagement arises from organic and honest interactions, and engineering it yourself carries a higher risk and maintenance cost that usually isn't worth it.
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