The task and original case
Create a capacity worksheet that keeps people, hours and tasks in consistent units. The supplied team appears to have room for twenty tasks, but the remaining capacity is only a model buffer. Show assumptions about availability and task duration before calling the schedule feasible.
| Case element | Value or requirement |
|---|---|
| Inputs | Three people each have 4 task hours;20 tasks require 30minutes each. |
| Build | A capacity worksheet with units, assumptions and a bottleneck note. |
This is an original invented exercise. It is independent practice, with no employer assessment or open-vacancy claim. Download the inputs, attempt your own result, then open the separate answer key.
Data and worked inputs
Build a result another person can follow
There are three people with four task hours each. Twenty tasks each require thirty minutes. Convert thirty minutes to 0.5 hours, multiply task count by task duration and separately multiply people by available task hours. Keep meetings or other commitments out of the available figure unless you explicitly subtract them.
Use a worksheet with people, per-person hours, task count, per-task minutes and normalized hours. A PivotTable can summarize numeric capacity inputs; inspect its aggregation setting using Microsoft's guidance. The feasibility rule here is planned hours ≤ available task hours. It assumes tasks are divisible or assignable and that every listed person can perform the required work.
Sources[1]
Check the worked result
Available capacity is 3 ×4 =12 hours. Planned work is 20 ×0.5 =10 hours. The remaining modeled buffer is two hours, or four tasks at the same average duration. That does not prove every real task will fit or every person has equal skill and availability.
Show one assignment example: seven, seven and six tasks use 3.5,3.5 and 3 hours respectively. Each person's four-hour limit is respected under this uniform-task assumption. Total capacity alone could hide a specialist bottleneck in a different case.
Make the failure visible
Make one person's available task time two hours instead of four. Total capacity becomes 10 hours and the buffer disappears. Then mark five tasks as requiring a specialist with only two available hours; those tasks need 2.5 hours and expose a bottleneck even if other people have spare time. Keep skill requirements distinct from headcount.
Revise it and ask someone to reproduce it
Ask a peer to add ten minutes to each task estimate. Planned work becomes 800 minutes, about 13.33 hours, exceeding twelve by 80 minutes. Preserve the original plan and revised shortfall. Return after a timed practice task to compare its observed duration with the assumption, without describing the invented model as actual team performance.
- Hours and minutes are normalized before subtraction.
- Both total capacity and individual assignment limits are inspectable.
- Duration changes and skill bottlenecks can invalidate the initial plan.
Describe the work accurately
After completing your own version, you could adapt this project bullet: “Created an independent capacity model with normalized units, per-person assignments, explicit buffer and a specialist-bottleneck check.”
Use Projects or Independent practice as the heading. Keep the input files, result and revision together. Describe only your own completed work; the invented numbers are model outputs, not employer results or measured business impact.