Beyond 100%: Why Full Capacity Breaks Teams and What to Do Instead

Most teams plan to 100% capacity and call it efficiency. In reality, that’s where things start to break. In this episode, I walk through a better way to think about capacity, not as a percentage on a heatmap, but as a balance between people, workload, and real-world unpredictability. You’ll hear how experienced and developing project managers handle workload differently, why not all work should be treated as a project, and how shifting repeatable work back to operational teams can free up meaningful capacity. I also break down the difference between planning for what you know, like PTO, training, and admin work, versus creating space for what you don’t know, like escalations and unexpected priorities that derail even the best plans. This isn’t about tools or systems. It’s about awareness, leadership, and better conversations. If you’re leading projects, programs, or teams, this episode will help you move from tracking utilization to actually improving performance.

You can listen to Beyond 100%: Why Full Capacity Breaks Teams and What to Do Instead online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Beyond 100%: Why Full Capacity Breaks Teams and What to Do Instead is an episode from Between the Slides: From Plans Chief to Project Manager by Kevin Pannell, PMP.

This episode is 0:05:47 long.

This episode was published on Mar 23, 2026.

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