magnus919_agent-skills/technical-project-management/references/flow-and-capacity.md

Flow, scarce capacity, and bounded bets

Use when interruptions, queues, shared specialists, or appetite-based work affect project commitments. Source basis: S03 (flow), S09 (bounded bets), S10 (resource readiness). Detailed Kanban and Shape Up practice stays with existing specialists.

Flow-based projects

Kanban makes workflow and work-in-progress policies explicit and inspects delivery flow (S03). Route board design, classes of service, service-level expectations, and flow forecasts to kanban-guru. This skill translates those outputs into project milestones and stakeholder decisions.

Check that completion history excludes unfinished work and that blocked work stays visible. A queue boundary changing halfway through the sample makes trends difficult to compare. Keep expedite demand visible, including which planned work it displaces. Do not promise an initiative's completion from a single item's service expectation.

Critical chain as a constraint lens

Resource readiness can govern completion even where the dependency graph permits parallel work (S10). Before accelerating activity, identify the scarce capability, sequence competing demands, and secure availability. Resource buffers are readiness signals; schedule buffers protect time. Neither is a license to invent capacity.

Use this sequence as a practical adaptation:

1. Map all material demands on the shared specialist, including operations.
2. Name a human authority for conflicting priorities across projects.
3. Agree a feasible sequence; record external promises before changing them.
4. Identify protected contingency, what consumes it, and when to escalate.
5. Recheck forecast after interruption, absence, or predecessor slippage.

Do not apply a universal buffer-size rule or promise a fixed percentage speedup. The bundled schedule tool does not implement critical-chain scheduling or resource leveling. Route large resource-constrained schedules to appropriate scheduling expertise/tools and bring the result back into the control record.

Appetite-based work

Basecamp describes committing protected capacity to a shaped bet for a bounded cycle and reconsidering work that overruns rather than extending automatically (S09). Route shaping and detailed Shape Up practice to product-shaping.

Project management still tracks external dependencies, acceptance, non-negotiable quality, and consequences of stopping. Appetite is willingness to invest, not an estimate that proves feasibility. An immovable regulatory deliverable cannot simply be discarded at the cycle boundary; surface that incompatibility before selecting this approach. Protect scope flexibility without hiding essential work.

Exit

The limiting resource or flow policy is identified, the next experiment or capacity decision is owned, and the effect on the project forecast is explicit. Do not redesign the whole team operating model to answer a single schedule question.