Is your busiest person really the problem?
The person with the highest workload is fine and the person in the middle is the problem. Total load and being in two places at once are different questions, and the report answers both in the same table.
Words on this sheet
- Predecessors: The tasks that have to finish before this one can start. Put their IDs here, separated by commas, and leave it blank when nothing has to come first.
- F statistic: The variation between the groups divided by the variation inside them.
Work Intermediate Resource Load Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
Is Anyone Booked on Two Clients at Once?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
- The busiest person
- 87% Ana, 26 of 30 days, and never in two places at once
- The actual risk
- 2 at once Ben, double-booked for the first 6 days of the plan
- The job nobody owns
- 6 days practice admin sits unassigned on the report
- Plan length
- 30 days and the clash sits in its busiest week
Three client engagements, three people, and one job nobody owns. Click Run. The plan finishes on day 30 and the report ranks the team by total load: Ana carries 26 days against a 30-day plan, which is 87 percent and the highest on the sheet, Ben carries 24 days at 80 percent, and Cara carries 21 at 70 percent. Nobody is over a hundred percent.
On a utilization report this practice looks comfortable and slightly under-sold. Read the peak column instead and the answer inverts. Ana peaks at one task at a time all the way through, because her two jobs are in series. Ben peaks at two, and he is double-booked for the first six days of the plan, because the Client B quarterly close and the VAT filing both start on day zero and neither one is waiting for anything.
The person with the highest workload has no problem at all, and the person in the middle is trying to be in two places at once during the busiest week of the quarter. That is the distinction this tool exists to draw, and it is the reason a utilization percentage cannot find a schedule risk. Total load asks whether there is enough of somebody across the whole plan.
Concurrency asks whether they are in two places on a particular Tuesday. A plan can pass the first test comfortably and fail the second, and it is always the second that makes the date slip. Notice the last job too. Practice admin and invoicing has nobody in the Owner column, and the report carries it as unassigned with six days of work rather than quietly dropping it.
Six days of real work with nobody's name on it is the other way a small practice slips, and it belongs on the plan rather than in an evening. Second run: make the VAT filing wait for the board pack, and run again. Ben's peak drops to one, the overlap disappears, and the plan still finishes on day 30, because those six days were sitting on a path with float.
Now try the version most people reach for first, which is to make the VAT filing wait for the quarterly close instead. The peak goes straight back to two, this time over days nine to fourteen, because the board pack already waits for the close and the two simply collide somewhere else. The fix is a chain, not a nudge, and the clash cost nothing to fix here and would have cost a week to discover in the middle of a close.
What this cannot tell you is part-time allocation. Every task is treated as one person working on one thing, so somebody deliberately splitting a day across two clients reads as a clash even when it is perfectly manageable. To adapt it, put your own engagements in, fill the Owner column for every job you expect somebody to do, and read the peak column before the load column.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Multi-Client Load, carrying these columns:
- ID
- Task
- Predecessors
- Duration (days)
- Owner
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- What does one conflict of interest cost you?Who Works on Which Client?
- Which client is quietly about to leave?Which Engagements Renew?
- Which date can you defend when the client pushes?Can I Promise That Date to the Client?
- What is this comp package really worth?
- What is the engagement worth once scope grows?Take the Engagement or Pass?
- Which day can you promise and still be right nine times in ten?What deadline gives 90% odds of finishing?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Schedule risk analysis.