# Capacity planning for the CIO

> What a CIO needs to steer team capacity: a consolidated view, portfolio trade-offs, executive KPIs, and a typical workflow.

- HTML: https://www.simpleworkload.com/en/roles/cio
- Markdown: https://www.simpleworkload.com/en/roles/cio.md

## What does a CIO need to steer team capacity?

A CIO needs a consolidated, reliable view of workload and capacity across all teams, projects and run work included, to arbitrate the portfolio and defend decisions before the executive committee. In practice: a single record of assignments, overload detected before it delays projects, planned vs actual, and committee-ready reporting.

## Main challenges

- More business demand than real capacity, with no figure to say no or “not now”.

- Workload data scattered across spreadsheets, project tools, and managers' heads.

- Run work absorbing a variable share of capacity and making project plans unrealistic.

- Trade-offs endured rather than decided, for lack of quantified scenarios.

## What a CIO expects from a capacity tool

- Net capacity per team and skill (leave, run work, and training deducted).

- Automatic detection of assignment conflicts between projects.

- What-if scenarios to measure the effect of starting, postponing, or stopping a project.

- Direct reporting for the executive and steering committees, without manual rework.

## CIO steering indicators

- **Allocation rate per team** : Planned workload ÷ available capacity: spots teams in overload or underload.
- **Run / Build split** : Share of capacity spent on operations versus transformation projects.
- **Planned vs actual variance** : Actual effort ÷ planned effort: measures forecast reliability.
- **Projects in capacity conflict** : Number of projects competing for the same people in the same period.
- **Critical skills coverage** : Scarce skills held by a single person (dependency risk).

## Typical workflow with Workload

1. Import teams, projects, and assignments (CSV) or connect Jira / Azure DevOps.
2. Review net capacity and overload for each team.
3. Simulate the possible trade-offs with what-if scenarios.
4. Present the capacity pack and proposed decisions to the committee.
5. Track planned vs actual from synced time and adjust the plan.

## FAQ

### What is the difference between a CIO dashboard and a capacity planning tool?

A dashboard displays indicators; a capacity planning tool holds the assignments and capacity that produce them, and lets you simulate decisions.

### From what team size is a dedicated tool useful?

Spreadsheets usually hold up to 15 to 20 people. Beyond 30 to 50 people and several parallel projects, a dedicated tool pays off quickly.

### How do you present capacity to the executive committee?

With three simple figures: available capacity, requested workload, and the gap per domain, along with proposed trade-offs.

## Sitemap

- [Markdown sitemap](https://www.simpleworkload.com/sitemap.md)
- [XML sitemap](https://www.simpleworkload.com/sitemap.xml)
- [llms.txt](https://www.simpleworkload.com/llms.txt)
- [llms-full.txt](https://www.simpleworkload.com/llms-full.txt)