Definitely, Maybe Agile

Do You Actually Have a Capacity Problem?


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Most organizations think they have a capacity problem. They usually don't.

What they have is a work-in-progress problem. And those two things call for very different solutions.

In this episode, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock dig into one of the most persistent headaches in organizational management: capacity tracking. Why does the instinct to measure utilization backfire? Why does loading people up to 100% actually slow things down? And what should leaders be asking instead?

The conversation covers the real cost of context switching, why that "nearly done" project is probably further away than it looks, and how AI is making all of this more urgent, not easier.

Three things to take away from this episode:

  1. 100% utilization is not a goal. It's a warning sign. 
  2. The right question isn't "how much capacity do we have?" It's "how much work in progress can we actually sustain?
  3. AI accelerates your breaking points.

If this conversation resonated, there's more where it came from. Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock explore these kinds of organizational challenges every week on Definitely Maybe Agile - the podcast that gets into the real complexity of modern ways of working, without the buzzwords.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or visit definitelymaybeagile.com to catch up on past episodes and reach out with your own questions.

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Definitely, Maybe AgileBy Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock


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