Duration: 30--40 minutes

## Definition

Capacity is the amount of work a person or team can realistically take
on. Work in Progress (WIP) is work started but not finished. A WIP limit
deliberately restricts concurrent work.

## Simple Mental Model

**Starting more does not mean finishing more.**

## How It Works

A 35-hour work week is not 35 project hours:

``` text
35 hours
├── 10h operations/tickets
├── 5h meetings/admin
├── 5h support/incidents
└── 15h project capacity
```

The exact split varies. The principle is that operational work consumes
real capacity.

Capacity also depends on specialties. You can have available developer
capacity while QA is overloaded, making QA the bottleneck.

Too much WIP creates context switching:

> Start → interrupt → switch → wait → restart

Reducing WIP can increase throughput even though fewer projects appear
active.

### Example

Two integrators each have four active projects plus tickets. After a
month, all eight projects moved slightly but none finished. Limiting
major active projects can produce fewer "In Progress" rows but more
completed outcomes.

### My Company / Real-World Context

Your team handles projects, Product work, Jira tickets, synchronization
incidents, QA, Data, SEO/WCAG, and meetings. Your portfolio should
eventually show what is truly active and what is intentionally queued.

Operational interruptions that happen every week are not exceptional.
Planning should account for them.

### CTO Perspective

If leadership wants ten initiatives but the organization can reliably
execute four, expose the constraint. Choices include doing fewer things,
reducing scope, extending timelines, adding capacity, reducing
operational load, improving automation, or accepting risk.

### Questions to Ask

-   How much project capacity do we actually have?
-   What percentage is regularly consumed by operations?
-   How many projects are active per owner?
-   Which role is the bottleneck?
-   What should remain queued?
-   What does a new project displace?

### Key Takeaways

-   Theoretical hours are not project capacity.
-   Operations consume capacity and should be planned for.
-   Too much WIP creates context switching and unfinished work.
-   WIP limits help teams finish before starting more.
-   Bottlenecks may be role-specific.
-   A healthy portfolio contains queued work, not only active work.

## How It Fits Into the Bigger Picture

This lesson builds on [[Projects vs Operations]], [[Outcomes and Definition of Done]], [[Scope and Scope Creep]], and [[Milestones vs Tasks]]. It prepares the project system to become
more predictable and scalable.

## Related Concepts

-   [[Milestones vs Tasks]]
-   [[Dependencies]]
-   [[Estimation and Forecasting]]
-   [[Prioritization]]
-   [[Risk Management]]
-   [[Project Health]]
-   [[Portfolio Management]]