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It can be a frustrating challenge to quickly gain visibility into exactly where your resources are being allocated, and especially difficult to see how they are lining up to your plans and goals. There is a measurable reduction in throughput when resource capacity is misaligned from your plans and goals. Have you noticed a reduction in throughput? Are you sure you are getting all you can from your existing resources? How can you even tell if you are? Here are the top three ways you can tell if you're not maximizing your resources.
1. Deliveries keep getting delayed
You keep missing set deadlines for your projects in production. Resources are not available when they need to be, causing delays as well as mounting internal frustration.
2. Big backlog
Your backlog grows as you push projects off of your roadmap, waiting for the ones in production to finish. Your roadmap continues to scale down, leaving you unable to accomplish what you had mapped out for the quarter.
3. Lead times getting longer and longer
It keeps taking longer and longer for you to deliver most of the projects on your roadmap, which wasn't always the case! What used to be a routine project, always taking a fairly standard amount of time to complete, no longer adds up that way. Lately, it has been creeping to an extra few days, weeks or maybe even months to finish.
Here's a Quick Solution:
Try limiting the timeline you are working in. By reducing the window of delivery you are working with, you can easily identify where resources are being allocated and what issues are piling up. There’s still lots of work to do... like putting together the bigger picture of the flow of your resources from one project to the next, or pinpointing the best solution for your individual situation, but it's a great place to start homing in on the problem.
Want some help? Our algorithms flag bottlenecks and instantly recommend solution options you can compare side by side to help you get the most out of your resources. Download our Escape the Reactive Cycle in Resource Capacity Planning Litepaper to get the insights!
