EXPERIMENT 01 / SCHEDULING
Enough hours.
At the wrong time.
See why a balanced daily total can still leave the busiest hours short of people.
THE CASE / 3-MINUTE EXPLORATION
Fictional teaching exampleStart with the situation.
The situation
A shop has enough staff hours for the day, yet customers queue at lunchtime.
Try this first
Keep the team at 12 people and move the shift-timing slider. Then change the team size.
What to look for
See why having enough hours in total does not mean having enough people at the right time.
New to the terminology? Start here.
- Demand
- How many people the work needs at a particular time.
- Coverage
- How much of that need the scheduled team can meet.
- People-hour
- One person working for one hour. Two people for three hours equals six people-hours.
THE LITTLE LAB
What if you could
play with the problem?
Sometimes a slider explains more than a spreadsheet. Try matching a team to a day’s demand and see what changes.
Same team. Different timing.
A very different working day.
The coverage conundrum
INTERACTIVEHow this example works
Nine one-hour periods, 8am–5pm. Coverage is the sum of min(scheduled, needed) divided by total people-hours needed. Timing redistributes the same total capacity; team size scales it. This is not a complete roster: breaks, skills, individual shifts and pay rules are excluded.
| Hour | Needed | Scheduled |
|---|