For many companies, September is planning season. Budgets for next year, roadmaps, hiring plans, targets. It is an important exercise.
It is also the time when many of next year's problems are created.
The most common mistake I see is simple: the roadmap is planned for a team that does not exist. It assumes the open positions will be filled in the first quarter. It assumes new hires will be fully productive after a few weeks. It assumes the team that delivered this year will deliver at least as much next year, plus the new commitments.
By March, the plan is behind. Not because anyone failed, but because it was built on assumptions nobody checked.
The Spreadsheet Team
Planning spreadsheets are generous. They count headcount, not capacity.
Hires arrive late Good engineers take time to find. A position approved in January is often filled in April or later. Until then, its capacity is zero.
New people need time A new engineer, even a very good one, needs months to understand the codebase, the product, and the way the team works. During that time, they also take time from the people helping them. In the short term, a hire can reduce team capacity before it increases it.
People leave Every team loses someone during the year. Planning for zero departures is planning for a year that will not happen.
Unplanned work is planned Incidents, urgent customer requests, security updates, and maintenance take a real share of every team's time. If the roadmap fills one hundred percent of capacity with new features, it is already over-committed.
Last year's speed is not guaranteed If the team delivered a lot this year with heroic effort, that pace may not be sustainable. Planning on top of it adds risk.
Start From Real Capacity
A more honest plan starts from what the current team can actually deliver, then adds carefully.
- Look at what really happened. How much did the team deliver this year, and how much of its time went to unplanned work? Use real data, even if it is rough. Your memory of the year is probably more optimistic than the record.
- Plan with the people you have today. Build the core roadmap on the current team only. These are your commitments.
- Add hires with realistic dates. For each planned hire, assume a realistic start date and a ramp-up period. Count their capacity only after that.
- Reserve time for the unexpected. Keep a clear share of capacity for incidents, maintenance, and requests nobody can predict. If it is not used, the team can pull work forward. That is a pleasant problem.
- Separate commitments from hopes. Present the plan in two parts: what we will deliver with the team we have, and what we can add if hiring goes well. Leadership can then make informed choices instead of discovering the gap later.
Hard Conversations Now Are Cheaper
Planning this way often produces a smaller roadmap than leadership hoped for. That can be an uncomfortable conversation in September.
It is much more comfortable than the conversation in May, when half the year's commitments are late, the team is exhausted, and customers have been promised features that are not coming.
An honest plan also opens better options. If the realistic roadmap is not enough, the company can decide what to do about it now: cut scope, change priorities, bring in outside help for a specific project, or invest in removing what slows the team down. All of these are easier to arrange in the autumn than in a crisis.
Capacity You Can Create
Planning with the team you have does not mean accepting today's capacity forever. Often the fastest way to deliver more next year is not hiring, but removing friction:
- Work that waits for reviews, decisions, or environments.
- Recurring incidents that take engineers away from the roadmap.
- Manual release steps that could be automated.
- Knowledge locked in one or two people, which slows everyone else.
These improvements are rarely in the plan, because they do not look like features. But they increase the capacity of the whole team, including every person you hire later.
Plan for the Year That Will Actually Happen
A good plan is not the most ambitious one. It is the one that still makes sense in June.
Start from the team you have. Add new people realistically. Leave room for the unexpected. Be clear about what is committed and what is hoped for.
Your team will thank you, and so will your customers, when the roadmap you present in January is the one you actually deliver.
