Is the biggest engagement worth the two it blocks?
Six engagements, 170 principal hours, 400 consultant hours, and every one of them all or nothing. The pipeline-meeting plan books $124,000 and looks finished. The optimizer books $136,000 by turning the biggest job down.
Work Starter Optimization free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Which Engagements Should We Take?
- 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.
The answer
Biggest-first against the optimized set:
- Optimized
- $136,000 165 and 395 hours used
- Biggest-first
- $124,000 130 and 390 hours used
- Difference
- $12,000 same quarter, same team
- Idle principal hours
- 40 in the biggest-first plan
Look at what the opening plan was doing: 390 of 400 consultant hours gone and 40 principal hours idle, because nothing left on the sheet fits into the ten consultant hours remaining. Drop the $46,000 pricing study and you free 80 principal and 60 consultant hours, which is room for two engagements worth $58,000 between them. The optimizer is not picking the best engagements, it is picking the set that fits, and when two resources are scarce those are not the same thing. Raise the principal hours to 210 and the pricing study comes straight back in for $151,000, which prices an extra week of your own time.
The model
One row per engagement with its fee and the two kinds of hour it consumes. The take-it cells are forced to a clean 0 or 1, so nothing comes back as 40 percent of a pricing study.
| Engagements | 6 |
| Principal hours available | 170 |
| Consultant hours available | 400 |
| Fees on the sheet | $18,000 to $46,000 |
| Which to take, and total fee | solved |
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
- Is filling every billable hour the wrong plan?Where Should My Own Week Go?
- Is 32 hours a week a target or a wish?What Does a Typical Billable Week Look Like?
- Is your biggest client really your best one?Which Clients Are Actually Worth Keeping?
- What is the lowest rate that is not a subsidy?What Rate Do I Have to Charge?
- Which few tasks are eating the whole calendar?How Long Do Our Tasks Really Take?
- How much should you pad the next estimate?How Wrong Are Our Estimates, Usually?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization in Google Sheets.