Questions we answerCapacity and workload
Is this a busy period or a real capacity problem?
A peak has a shape and an end; a capacity problem does not. Telling them apart before you commit to a salary is the single most valuable thing you can do here.
Free · a few minutes · starts from “We're overloaded”
The short answer
A busy period has a cause you can name and an end you can point at — a launch, a season, one large customer, a migration. A capacity problem has neither: the pressure has lasted months, has no date after which it eases, and grows as the business grows. Peaks are answered by covering the work temporarily or cutting scope; capacity problems are answered by changing something structural. Hiring into a peak is the expensive mistake, because the role outlasts the reason for it by years.
In week six of a hard quarter, a peak and a permanent shortage feel identical. They are not, and the cost of confusing them is asymmetric: covering a genuine capacity problem temporarily is inconvenient, while hiring permanently into a peak commits a salary long after the reason has gone.
The distinguishing question is boring and effective: what is causing this, and when does that cause stop? If you can answer both, it is a peak. If you cannot answer either, it is probably not.
Is it really this?
Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.
Signs it is
- You can name the cause, and there is a date after which it eases.
- The team was coping six months ago with the same headcount.
- The extra work is concentrated in one area rather than everywhere.
Signs it's something else
- Nobody can say what started it or when it would stop.
- The last two peaks never ended, they just merged.
- Volume has grown in line with the business and nothing has been taken away.
What's usually behind it
- A genuine seasonal or project-driven spike that is being read as the new normal.
- Steady growth that has been absorbed quietly for months until it stopped being absorbable.
- A one-off that has quietly become a standing commitment nobody decided to take on.
What people usually get wrong
- Hiring permanently in month two of a three-month spike.
- Calling a recurring annual season a peak and being surprised by it every year.
- Assuming that because people are tired, the answer must be more people.
The options, and when each one fits
In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.
Cover it temporarily
There is a nameable cause and a foreseeable end.
Cut or defer scope
Something can genuinely wait, and deciding what is cheaper than resourcing it.
Treat it as structural
The pressure has lasted, has grown and has no end in sight.
When doing nothing is the right call
If you genuinely cannot tell, waiting one more cycle usually answers it at a cost of a difficult month. That is far less than the cost of a permanent role hired against a temporary cause, and the evidence you get is unambiguous.
What the diagnostic asks
- How long this has been the case and whether it is growing, steady or a temporary peak.
- What kind of pressure it is — volume, a missing skill, or work nobody owns.
- How much of the process is written down.
- When it needs to be sorted by.
“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.
The routes it weighs
Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.
Do nothing yet
Record the issue, set a revisit date, and decide what would change your mind.
Outsource
Hand a defined, ongoing scope of work to an external provider.
Redistribute
Move ownership of the work to where it fits, and make that explicit.
Process improvement
Change how the work flows — remove steps, name an owner, fix the hand-offs.
Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
Specialist support
Bring in a freelancer, consultant or specialist for a defined piece of work.
What changes the answer
- A nameable cause with an end date points firmly at covering rather than hiring.
- Pressure that has grown steadily over a year, with nothing to point at, supports a structural answer.
- A peak that has happened three years running is not a peak; it is a season you have not resourced.
Get your own read
A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.
Related questions
- My team is overloaded. What should I do?Start by finding out whether the overload is volume, design or ownership. Each has a different fix, and only one of them is more people.
- How do I reduce workload without hiring?Three levers in order: stop doing some of it, change how the rest flows, and automate what is genuinely repeatable. Most teams reach for the third and skip the first two.
- Should I hire now or wait?Timing is a real decision, not a delay. Hire now when the need is durable and fundable and the role is defined; wait when any of those is still a guess.
- Is my team too small?Team size only means something against the work. The useful question is whether what is being asked of the team is achievable by the people in it, arranged the way they are.
- Too much depends on one person. What are my options?Reduce the fragility before it becomes a crisis: write the work down, develop a second person, move adjacent work off them, or decide it is acceptable for now with a date to look again.
- My best people are doing low-value workExpensive people doing cheap work is a real and quantifiable loss. The fix is usually to move or remove the work, not to hire someone junior to absorb it.