Capacity Planning: Demand, Resources and Productivity

Posted on: 4th October 2026

Instructor: N/A • Language: N/A

Master capacity planning with demand forecasting, gap analysis, productivity measurement, and budget justification that gets approved.

Description

Headcount requests rarely get approved because they arrive as a feeling rather than a number. This course fixes that gap, covering the arithmetic behind full time equivalents and demand forecasting, the operational causes of lost capacity like bottlenecks and context switching, and how to turn an overloaded team into a budget proposal somebody can approve.

This Course Offers

  • The arithmetic of capacity covering employee types, full time equivalents, demand forecasting from extrapolation through Delphi, job design, workload norming, and gap analysis
  • The operating layer where capacity is genuinely lost, including bottlenecks, queues, idle time, context switching, and unsynchronised teams
  • Measurement using segmentation, lifetime value, funnels, correlation, multiple regression, and forecasting to turn impressions into numbers
  • Budgeting linked to strategy, including return calculation and payroll, hiring, learning, and automation budgets
  • Individual capacity recovery through prioritisation, delegation, time blocking, and finding where hours actually go

Why We Love This Course

  1. It addresses the real problem, which is that overload is visible but unmeasured, so nothing gets approved.
  2. No statistics background is required, since forecasting is built from zero.
  3. The work happens on your own numbers rather than a case study, so you finish with something usable.
  4. Mike Pritula built the people system at Preply through rapid growth and has taught over 1.6 million students, so the material comes from practice.

Capacity problems tend to get resolved by attrition rather than planning, which is the most expensive way to fix them. Do you want to keep asking for headcount and being asked for evidence, or bring a number that stands up? Enrollment is open, and a spreadsheet you can work in is all you need.

Course Eligibility

  • This course is perfect for operations leaders balancing demand against a fixed team.
  • It suits managers who have asked for headcount and been asked for evidence.
  • Function heads, planning and finance specialists, founders, and team leads facing persistent overload will find the measurement and budgeting frameworks directly useful.

Course Requirements

  • Responsibility for how much work a team or function can absorb is expected.
  • No statistics background is required, since forecasting is built up from zero.
  • A spreadsheet you can work in is needed for the analytics and budgeting blocks, and English at intermediate level or above is expected.

Interested in exploring more lessons? Check out our full course library to continue building your skills and advancing your learning journey.

Price: Free