Most service businesses break because they sell more work than they can deliver. The symptoms show up as late projects, stressed teams, and declining customer satisfaction. The cure is a simple capacity model that helps you see how much work you can take on without damaging quality.

Start with real available hours, not theoretical hours. A team member may work 40 hours a week, but only 25 to 30 of those are billable or productive delivery time after meetings, admin, and context switching. Calculate a realistic utilization rate for each role.

Define your unit of work. This could be hours per project, hours per month of support, or hours per deliverable. You need one standardized unit so you can compare demand to capacity. If every project is custom and the unit varies wildly, you will always be guessing.

Build a weekly capacity table. List each team member or role, their available hours, and their current committed hours. The difference is your remaining capacity. If the number is negative, you are already overbooked. If it is positive, that is your safe selling window.

Introduce a capacity buffer. Never sell to 100 percent utilization. Leave 10 to 20 percent for emergencies, rework, and onboarding. Without a buffer, one missed estimate will cascade into delays across the entire calendar.

Limit work in progress. Too many simultaneous projects create hidden capacity loss through context switching. Set a maximum number of active projects per team or per role and enforce it. When the cap is reached, new work waits or replaces lower-priority work.

Visualize the schedule. A simple weekly calendar that maps project milestones against available hours makes conflicts obvious. When everyone can see the next four weeks, it is easier to agree on tradeoffs and avoid overcommitting. Visibility is the most underrated part of capacity planning.

Track demand in the same unit. For each new deal, assign an estimated number of hours. If the estimate is rough, use ranges: best case, expected, worst case. This lets you see how sensitive the capacity is to variation and helps you decide whether to delay or split a project.

Improve estimates with a lightweight post-mortem. After each project, compare estimated hours to actual hours and note the cause of variance. Over time, you will build a simple reference library by project type. That reference makes future estimates more accurate and keeps your capacity model grounded in real delivery data.

Stagger start dates. When multiple projects begin the same week, onboarding and setup consume shared resources and create a hidden spike. A simple rule like "no more than two project kickoffs per week" keeps the calendar balanced and protects delivery quality.

Update the model weekly. Capacity changes as projects complete, people take time off, or new work arrives. A static capacity model is useless after a month. A weekly update takes 10 minutes and prevents 10 hours of firefighting.

Use the model to drive sales decisions. If capacity is tight, slow down sales or raise prices to reduce volume. If capacity is high, increase lead generation or offer a faster start date. The model makes these decisions proactive instead of reactive.

Review capacity by role, not just by total hours. You might have extra hours in design but zero hours in project management. If the bottleneck is in a critical role, the project will still stall. This is why role-level capacity is more actionable than total capacity.

Connect the model to hiring. If the model shows a consistent 20 percent overage for three months, you have justification to hire or contract. If overage is sporadic, you may need scheduling fixes rather than headcount.

Finally, share the model with the team. When everyone sees capacity, they understand why priorities shift and why some projects are delayed. Transparency reduces frustration and builds a culture of planning instead of panic.

A simple capacity model is not a fancy spreadsheet. It is a decision tool. It tells you when to sell, when to pause, and when to hire. Without it, you are guessing. With it, you can scale delivery with confidence.