The body of knowledge

The guide, in progress

• Principles

  A few ideas that hold across the whole map. Each one can be tested, and each one says how well it's supported.

• The work and the path

  What a capacity planner does, how people come into the role, and how the work grows from one service to the whole fleet, then forks.

• The map: altitude and cadence

  One picture that connects the high level to the low level over time. Every page in this guide sits somewhere on it.

Through the cycle

Five cadences, one loop. Each commits what its lead time forces.

1. AnnualThe envelope and strategic betsWhat you settle once a year, before finance locks its budget, and why the slowest supply has to be decided here.
2. QuarterlyForecast, declare, agree the coefficientsWhere demand is specified in driver units, supply answers in its own review, and medium-lead orders go in.
3. MonthlyCommit, fulfil, name the gapEach month, supply answers every approved ask with a date or a named gap, launches are re-ranked against what supply can do, and the ledger shows where each ask has got to.
4. WeeklySteer, bridge, test before launchBetween monthly reviews, you arbitrate, broker trades, run the bridges, test the coefficient before launch and keep the ledger true.
5. Post-launchMeasure, restate, re-baselineAfter launch, actuals become the next coefficient, misses are split by owner, declarations are scored, and what you learn feeds the next quarterly intake and, through it, the next annual plan.

↺ Post-launch feeds the next annual plan.

Across the cycle

• People: brokering the handshake

  How you work between capital, supply and demand when you own no capacity and no budget, and where your standing to say no comes from.

• Settings: how much of this you need

  How to scale the discipline to the size and risk of your setting, from an accelerator fleet to a mid-sized company, and what to start with.

• Cases

  The seed paper's worked example told as a case, a first problem-space case, and the format to use when you write one of your own.

• Limits: where this breaks

  Where the discipline stops working, what nobody has measured in public, and what the guide itself only argues.

Concepts

The ideas that recur across the map. Stage pages link here instead of repeating them.

1. ·Demand and declarationsHow step-change demand enters a plan as a declaration that firms up in five stages, and how you score it.
2. ·Supply layers and lead timesSupply comes in layers, each with its own lead time and contract terms, and the slow ones must be bought long before demand firms up.
3. ·The coefficientOne number forecasts a shared service's load and prices a caller's growth, so it needs an owner, versions and restating at breaks.
4. ·Three prices"What does capacity cost?" is three questions (who pays, should we build, who gets it now), and each needs its own price.
5. ·Approval and allocationApproving an ask in a common unit prices it but doesn't deliver machines of the right shape, in the right place, on time, so the gap needs an owner and a ledger.
6. ·Commit points and the commit-point methodEach supply layer has a last date it can be ordered; the method reads how firm a launch is at each one and decides what to commit, in what form, and who owns the rest.
7. ·Buffers and reservesName each buffer and size it on which mistake costs more, running short or holding spare; lead time pushes buffers up and pooling pulls them down.
8. ·The operating mechanismsThirteen artifacts, each with an owner and an indicator, keep the agreement true from one cycle to the next; nine decision rights sit beside them.
9. ·The measuring loopWatch the ratio between a business driver and the resources it uses, alert when it shifts, and treat every change to it as a new version of a price.

Reference shelf

1. ·Case studiesWhole problem spaces to practice the discipline on.
2. ·GlossaryThe seed’s terms, merged and alphabetical.
3. ·The worksheetWalk one launch through the commit-point method (seed paper, Appendix A).
4. ·The public record on supplyLead times, power and contracts, from public sources (Appendix B).
5. ·ReferencesEvery public source the guide and the seed cite.
6. ·Visual tourAll 61 of the seed paper’s figures, in order.

The seed paper