It’s a situation most, if not all of us, find ourselves in throughout our careers: Biting off more than we can chew. We say ‘yes’ to more work because we’re a go-getter, a people-pleaser, an over-achiever, or all of the above. Sound familiar?
Whether you’re the only employee of your business or oversee an entire team, it’s crucial to learn how to manage project capacity and workloads. First, it prevents you from biting off more than you can chew. Second, it helps you be more realistic about the tasks and projects you assign to yourself and others on your team.
Yes, it can be a bit of an adjustment, but trust me – you’ll thank yourself in the future for not overworking yourself and avoiding burnout.
So, how exactly can you plan for future project capacity and workloads? Through my all-time favorite project management tool: ClickUp. Inside, there are three amazing views you can start utilizing to get a much clearer picture of:
Ready to see these ClickUp views in action? Watch the video below, or continue reading below!
Box View is a great way to get an idea of what’s going on with each member of your team. It gives you a snapshot look at the number of tasks assigned to everyone and the status of each, including:
This way, you can quickly and easily see if someone is overloaded with tasks or doesn’t have much on their plate.
What I love even more about this view is that it shows the overall progress of each of these tasks as a percentage. To see this info, you’ll select a due date within this view. I like to see the entire week at a glance, so I typically select the end of the week for the due date. From there, it will show the progress of each team member and how close (or far away) they are from completing their tasks by then.
For example, maybe you’re 30% finished with all of your tasks, while another teammate is 80% finished with theirs. After a quick glance, you might determine that your teammate can take on more work in the week or weeks ahead, given the fact that they’ve made a lot of progress and completed most of their tasks.
If you’re more of a visual person, Timeline View within ClickUp is the perfect option for week-by-week project planning and team workloads.
That’s because it shows you – in timeline form – who’s working on what and for how long. Even better, you can see which projects and tasks are overlapping, so you can easily determine who has too much on their plate and who could use more tasks to fill up their week.
Finally, one of my all-time favorite views inside ClickUp is Workload View. This gives you a weekly, daily, and hourlyview of your team’s workloads and capacity, and you can view that through time estimates, project tasks, or sprints.
For example, if I take a look at the weekly view, I can quickly see the capacity of myself and everyone on my team throughout the week. Maybe on Wednesday, I only have 2 out of my 8 hours account for. But on Thursday, I might have 6 of my 8 hours accounted for. As a result, I’ll likely adjust some projects and tasks to find a better balance.
Even more exciting is that you can look at the Workload View for one week, two weeks, or an entire month. This way, you can plan weeks ahead at a time. How amazing is that?
Now that you know how to get a closer and more accurate look at your workloads and capacity, it’s time to start planning like a pro. What better way to do that than a brand-new ClickUp template?!
With this Project Availability Template, you can carefully plan and account for new and incoming work. I made this for DaSilva Life after our sales calls started picking up because I wanted to make sure that our team had the availability and capacity before promising dates and dedicated hours to clients. Now, I’m sharing it with you!
.png)
You can grab this template inside the Systems School Template Vault, so you can balance client work and business work without burning out!
