Publishing the Result
Who should receive a capacity account, in what form, and the three ways publication goes wrong even when the numbers are right.
An account that is not published is a private spreadsheet, and private spreadsheets do not change anything. Publication is the step that converts bookkeeping into a decision aid, and it is the step most commonly skipped for reasons that have nothing to do with the numbers.
The reconciliation in “Publishing the Result” is strongest when assumptions and current work records can be examined separately. A team considering review this official planning resource for managing freelance project time can add time and project context, with transparent settings, limited access and a clear correction route around consequential decisions.
The three failures are publishing too narrowly, publishing conditionally, and publishing in a form nobody reads.
Teams documenting “Publishing the Result” may use US Department of Labor workforce resources as an independent reference. Test the approach against actual constraints and accountable decision owners.
Who should receive it
Everybody with a claim in the book. The line manager whose team it describes. Whoever can cancel a claim. And the team itself.
Four audiences, one document. The temptation to tailor it by audience should be resisted: the value of the account is that everybody is looking at the same arithmetic.
Why the team gets it
Because they are absorbing the difference. A team working inside a twenty per cent overcommitment is entitled to know that the shortfall is structural rather than a reflection of how fast they work.
It also produces corrections: the people doing the work know which claims are larger than the book thinks, and they will say so if the book is visible.
Publishing conditionally
The most damaging failure: the account appears when the news is good and goes quiet when it is not. Two or three cycles of that and the absence of a report becomes the report.
A fixed publication date, honoured in bad months, is the only thing that prevents it. The discipline is worth more than any individual month's accuracy.
The form
One page, the eleven lines, a change column, and three sentences of commentary at most. Sent as the body of a message rather than as an attachment nobody opens.
Commentary should describe changes rather than argue: "the difference moved from +221 to −160 because Project C was confirmed" is useful; "we are now significantly overcommitted" is an interpretation and belongs to the reader.
What not to put in it
Names against hours, where that can be avoided. Individual leave or absence detail. Anything that would turn a capacity document into a record about a person.
Aggregate for publication, detail in the working file, and a clear understanding of who may see which.
Publishing a negative difference
Plainly, with the two or three options that would close it, and without a recommendation unless one has been asked for.
The options matter: a difference published alone invites the response that the team should try harder. A difference published with "this closes if Project C slips a month, or if the regulatory return moves to the central team, or by adding 0.3 FTE" is a decision somebody can take.
Timing relative to governance
The account should arrive before the meeting that allocates, not after. Accounts published in arrears describe decisions that have already been taken and are read as commentary.
Aligning the publication date to land three working days before the portfolio meeting is a small scheduling change that doubles the document's influence.
The archive
Keep every published version, unedited. The series is where the value compounds, and the first time somebody disputes a trend the archive is what settles it.
A folder with twelve files a year, named by date, is sufficient. Nothing more elaborate survives a change of owner.
When somebody asks for a different version
The usual request is for a version without the assumed claims, or without the contingency line, for a particular audience.
Produce it as a clearly-labelled extract rather than as a second account, and keep the extract in the archive too. Two accounts in circulation is the state this whole collection exists to prevent.
The three sentences of commentary
- What changed since last month, and which line it was.
- What the difference is now, with its sign.
- What decision, if any, is being asked for and by when.
Three sentences. Longer commentary gets read as argument, and an account that argues loses the quality that makes it useful, which is that it appears to belong to nobody.
Why attachments fail
A spreadsheet attached to a message is opened by about a third of its recipients and by almost none on a phone. The page has to be in the body.
That single formatting decision does more for the account's reach than any amount of work on its contents, and it also forces the discipline of fitting on one page.
The measure of whether publication is working
Other people start quoting the numbers without being prompted, and they quote them correctly.
That happens around the fourth or fifth cycle, and when it does the account has stopped being the planner's document and become the organisation's, which is the only durable outcome.