Here's the uncomfortable truth: Only 16% of all IT projects are delivered on time, within budget, and with all features. That's not bad luck. That's flying blind.

Without capacity visibility, planning becomes guesswork:

• How much time does Sarah really have this week?

• Is Tom already overloaded or can he take more?

• How many hours does the junior need for these three features?

• Who even has bandwidth for that "urgent" client request?

You don't know. Nobody knows. You distribute tasks by gut feeling and hope for the best.

A mid-sized web agency in Stuttgart – 18 developers, specialized in e-commerce projects – analyzed their delivery problems in 2023. The result was brutal: Three juniors regularly started the week with over 20 tickets each. Two seniors only had 5-6 tickets each. Nobody noticed. Nobody had an overview of actual capacity.

This leads to missed deadlines, stressed teams, and frustrated clients. And here's the crazy part: Everyone's working hard. But nobody's working on the right things at the right time.

Why "Just Distribute Evenly" Doesn't Work

The typical response: "Let's just distribute evenly. Everyone gets the same number of tickets."

Sounds fair. But it's not.

Because not everyone has equal capacity:

• Sarah's only in three days (vacation Monday, sick Friday)

• Tom has four client meetings scheduled this week

• The junior takes three times as long as the senior for some tasks

• Lisa's working on a feature that takes the entire week

"Distribute evenly" ignores reality. And the numbers prove it: Overallocation leads to burnout, decreased quality, and missed deadlines. That's not a minor issue. That's a massive problem.

And even worse: 75% of project managers say they're regularly asked to do too much with too few resources. That's the reality in three out of four teams.

Without visual representation, you don't see overload. You notice it when it's too late – when deadlines are blown, when quality suffers, when people burn out.

The Pipeline: Aligning Workload with Actual Capacity

Enter the Pipeline.

The Pipeline is essentially a visual weekly view that brings two things together:

1. The actual capacity of each team member (not theoretical, but real – including meetings, vacation, other commitments)

2. The planned workload (which tasks are scheduled, how long they take)

The brilliant part: You immediately see who's overloaded and who still has capacity.

The visualization runs in 15-minute slots across the entire week. Sounds granular? That's intentional. Because this way you can see if someone's overloaded on Wednesday with 3 meetings and 2 critical tasks, while someone else has bandwidth.

The Pipeline automatically syncs with the Team Calendar. Vacation? Sick days? Holidays? All already there. No more nasty surprises on Monday morning.

How It Works in Practice

In weekly planning, you open the Pipeline. Everyone sees the same view on screen:

Sarah: 24 hours available this week (3 days, Monday and Friday automatically excluded)
Tom: 32 hours available (40 hours minus 8 hours of meetings already in the calendar)
Lisa: 40 hours available
Junior Dev Max: 36 hours available (4 hours blocked for code review with the senior)

Now you start distributing tasks. You drag an 8-hour feature onto Sarah. The Pipeline immediately shows: 24 hours available, 8 hours planned → 16 hours remaining. Green.

You drag two more tasks onto Sarah. Now she's at 28 hours. The Pipeline turns yellow. Warning: Overload.

You move a task to Lisa. Her bar gets longer but stays green. She still has capacity.

That's the difference: From "Hope we can pull this off" to "We know exactly what's possible."

The Difference from Spreadsheet Chaos

Many teams "plan" with Excel or Google Sheets. The problem: Spreadsheets show you numbers, not reality.

You write "Sarah: 5 tasks" in a cell. Looks like a plan. But you don't see:

• That Sarah only has 24 hours, not 40

• That three of these tasks each take 10 hours

• That she's hopelessly overloaded

With the Pipeline, you see it immediately. Visual. Real-time. Transparent for everyone on the team.

And more importantly: It's not static. When something changes (Sarah's actually sick Friday, a new critical bug comes in, a task takes longer than expected), you adjust the Pipeline and immediately see the impact on the rest of the week.

No manual updates. No emails. No "Who has capacity right now?" questions. It's just there.

The Reality

The Pipeline turns guesswork into informed decisions.

You see what's realistic. Your team knows what's expected of them. And on Monday at 9 AM, you no longer have "87 tickets, 6 developers, zero plan" – but a clear, visual overview of the week.

That's the difference between a team that hopes and a team that knows.