Content · Production · Component
The capacity
What can genuinely be produced and approved in a normal month, with the buffer that lets a schedule survive an ordinary disruption.
The deliverable
What it is
Capacity is the plan’s ceiling and is rarely calculated. A plan above it is not ambitious; it is a silent decision to publish thinner work, and the decision is taken by whoever is closest to the deadline.
A normal month includes somebody being away. Capacity modelled from a month when everyone was present describes a month that occurs perhaps twice a year.
One level in
What it is made of
Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.
The throughput
How much actually gets out in a normal month.
3 attributes: Pieces per month · Period · Confidence
LearnThe buffer
The slack that lets the schedule survive an ordinary month.
3 attributes: Slack · Reason · Status
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Model a month with somebody away. The month where everyone is present happens twice a year.
The other components in production
The cost per format
Fully loaded, from first research to published — including the review cycles that dominate the total and appear in no estimate.
LearnThe constraint
Where work actually waits, measured rather than assumed — because it is nearly always approval, and nearly always blamed on the people making the work.
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