The Opening Balance Problem
Why each planning period starts with capacity already spent, how to measure the carry-forward, and what a plan that ignores it looks like three months in.
Every planning period opens with claims carried forward from the last one: work that overran, claims that started late, tails that nobody closed. That carry-forward is capacity spent before the period begins.
The reconciliation in “The Opening Balance Problem” is strongest when assumptions and current work records can be examined separately. A team considering visit the supporting product page for workload distribution can add time and project context, with transparent settings, limited access and a clear correction route around consequential decisions.
Plans that start each period from zero are systematically optimistic by the size of the carry-forward, which in most organisations is between ten and twenty-five per cent of a period.
Teams documenting “The Opening Balance Problem” may use OSHA safety-management guidance as an independent reference. Test the approach against actual constraints and accountable decision owners.
Where the carry-forward comes from
Overruns, which are claims that needed more than they estimated. Late starts, which are claims that consumed none of the previous period and all of this one. And tails, which are claims that are mostly finished and not quite.
Three causes, one effect: the period starts with its capacity partly allocated to decisions taken before it.
Measuring it
At the close before a new period begins, list every open claim with its remaining estimate. That total is the opening balance, and it goes at the top of the claims side of the new period's page.
It is a five-minute exercise and it is the step that most distinguishes a capacity account from a wish list.
The remaining estimate problem
Claimants are poor at estimating what is left, systematically and in one direction. "Nearly finished" has a well-known habit of lasting as long as the work so far.
Where history exists, use it: a claim that has consumed twice its original estimate is not reliably ninety per cent complete. Where it does not, record the claimant's figure and flag the ones that have been "nearly finished" for more than one period.
The plan that ignores it
Looks adequate in week one and is visibly short by week four, every period, in a way that gets attributed to the current period's work rather than to the previous period's tail.
That misattribution is the real cost: the organisation keeps diagnosing a problem in the wrong quarter.
Showing it on the page
One line at the top of the claims block: "carried forward from last period: 340 hours across four claims". Visible, dated, with the claims named in the working document.
It also creates a useful pressure: a carry-forward that grows each period is a signal that the organisation is committing faster than it completes, which no single period's figures can show.
The closing discipline that reduces it
Claims that are genuinely finished should be closed at the close, not left open "just in case". An open claim consumes capacity in the next period whether or not anybody works on it.
Five minutes of closure at the end of each period is what keeps the opening balance honest, and it is the step most often skipped because it feels like administration.
The claim that should not carry forward
Where a claim has been open across three periods without completing, something is wrong with the claim rather than with the capacity: scope that keeps moving, a dependency that never resolves, or work that was never actually wanted.
Those should be escalated rather than rolled, and the rolling is what prevents the escalation from happening.
Opening balances across teams
A portfolio opening balance is the sum of the team ones and is usually the first number that makes the portfolio's real position visible.
Where a portfolio consistently opens at twenty per cent committed before any new decisions are taken, that fact belongs in the governance conversation and almost never reaches it.
A sound opening balance
An opening balance of under ten per cent, falling rather than rising, with no claim older than two periods.
That state is reachable through closure discipline alone and does not require anything to be cancelled. Most of the improvement comes from closing work that finished and nobody recorded.
The four questions for a carried claim
- What is actually left, in hours?
- What was the original estimate, and what has it consumed?
- Why did it not finish?
- Is the end date a date or a hope?
Four questions per carried claim, asked at the close. They take two minutes each and they are the only mechanism that distinguishes a tail from a claim that has quietly become permanent.
Carry-forward and the hiring argument
A team whose opening balance grows every period will not be fixed by hiring, because the growth is a commitment rate problem rather than a capacity one.
Showing the series — opening balance by period for a year — is the clearest way to make that argument, and it is usually the first time anybody in the conversation has seen the organisation's commitment rate as a number.
The sentence for the top of the page
"This period opens with 340 hours already committed to work carried forward, which is 16 per cent of net capacity."
One line, and it changes how everything below it is read.