Monthly allocation and capacity alerts in one system
A medical device company orchestrates design operations and capacity planning in Airtable, consolidating form-based intake tickets, multi-table project tracking, and a Jira-to-Airtable capacity sync across roughly 45 designers. The solution maps monthly allocations, flags over and under capacity, and gives leadership a single source of truth that replaced four fragmented bases and eliminated manual PowerPoint reporting.
The problem
Resource and capacity planning ran through manual Excel-based spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks that leadership had to rebuild by hand, while the underlying data lived across four different bases with no single view of who was doing what.
Managers had no visibility into who was over or under capacity until reprioritization was already forced, and designers were reluctant to track project work in a tool built for engineering, which pushed capacity data further out of reach.
What they built
Design Operations, UX, Product Management, and Engineering consolidated form-based design ticket intake with multi-table project and task tracking in a single Airtable system, replacing the four fragmented bases.
A Jira-to-Airtable capacity sync feeds monthly percentage allocation per person, tied to annual hours, and the system automatically flags over and under capacity so managers and executives get interface-driven portfolio dashboards instead of static slides.
The outcome
Leadership works from one source of truth for design work and capacity instead of reconciling four bases, and automated capacity data now drives decisions that used to rely on manual Excel checks.
The manual PowerPoint reporting burden is gone, replaced by dashboards built directly on current allocation data, which supports healthier team workloads and a consolidated portfolio view for leadership.
Inside the solution
Resource and Capacity Planning with Monthly Allocation and Alerts
Resource & Capacity Planning
- Monthly percentage allocation per person tied to annual hours
- Jira-to-Airtable capacity data sync
- Form-based design ticket intake
- Multi-table project and task tracking
- Over and under capacity alerts and dashboards
- Interface-driven manager and executive portfolio dashboards
- Manual Excel-based planning and PowerPoint reporting
- Fragmented data across four different bases
- Designers' aversion to a ticketing tool built for engineering
- No visibility into who is over or under capacity
- Burnout from constant reprioritization
- Single source of truth for design work and capacity
- Automated capacity data for decision-making
- Reduced manual reporting burden
- Healthier team workloads and reduced burnout
- Consolidated portfolio view for leadership
- Design Operations
- UX
- Product Management
- Engineering
- Jira
Resource and Capacity Planning with Monthly Allocation and Alerts
Plan every designer's month as a percentage of their annual hours, see instantly who is over or under capacity, and run intake requests, projects, tasks, and staffing from one connected system instead of four disconnected bases and a hand-built slide deck. Automations open a triage task the moment a request arrives, flag a person-month when a manager starts rebalancing, and email a weekly capacity digest, while AI fields draft triage notes, rebalancing recommendations, and executive portfolio summaries.
From four fragmented bases to one alerting system
Copy the templates
Consolidate the bases
Sync capacity and set alerts
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Each person has a percentage allocation tied to their annual hours, tracked monthly and fed by a sync from Jira, so managers see current capacity instead of a spreadsheet that needed manual updates.
The system compares monthly percentage allocation against annual hours per person and flags when someone is over or under capacity, giving managers visibility before reprioritization becomes forced.
A single system of record that consolidates form-based intake, multi-table project tracking, and capacity data, so managers and executives work from one portfolio dashboard instead of reconciling four sources.
Interface-driven dashboards now pull directly from live allocation and project data, which eliminated the manual reporting burden and gave leadership a consolidated portfolio view without rebuilding slides.
The allocation, alerting, and project tracking workflows run on structured records, forms, and a ticketing system sync rather than AI. The account's structured capacity data is the kind of foundation future AI-assisted planning work would build on.