What is the 25-15 resource planning method?

The 25-15 method is a simple capacity rule for small teams: plan people to a realistic ceiling of billable effort, not their full week, so meetings, admin, and the unexpected have somewhere to live. It keeps a team from planning at 100% on paper and then drowning the moment real work arrives.

The source article makes a practical point that still holds up: small teams get into trouble when they plan every person as if the entire week is available for deliverable work.

On paper that looks efficient. In real life it breaks fast. Client questions show up. Internal coordination takes effort. Meetings happen. Review takes longer than expected. A small issue on one Job can drag attention away from another. None of that is unusual. It is normal operating reality.

The 25-15 method is a way to plan for that reality instead of pretending it will not happen.

The problem with planning people to a full week

Owners and leads often build capacity plans around an ideal week. The assumption is simple: if a person has a full week available, all of it can be loaded with billable delivery.

That is the setup the source is pushing back on. A full week on paper does not mean a full week is truly available for planned production. The week also has coordination, decisions, interruptions, and the little fires that come with running a service business.

If you ignore those, your plan will look healthy right until the first real-world interruption arrives. Then everyone looks behind, even though the plan was the part that was unrealistic.

What the 25-15 method actually means

The method’s own definition is simple. Plan around 25 for direct deliverable effort and 15 for the rest of the week that work requires.

That second part is not wasted time. It is where planning, communication, follow-up, issue handling, and schedule repair live. It is the space that keeps the first part from collapsing.

The value of the method is not mathematical purity. It is that it gives a small team permission to stop lying to itself about how the week works.

A worked example

Say one of your developers is assigned two active Jobs and a small internal cleanup item this week.

If you plan them as fully available for delivery, the week may look fine at first. You assign deliverables tightly, count on steady focus, and assume the rest will sort itself out. Then a client review creates revision work, a contractor needs clarification, and one handoff takes longer than expected. Suddenly the same person looks overloaded, even though nothing unusual happened.

Using the 25-15 method, you build the week differently from the start. The deliverable plan fits inside the 25 side. The 15 side absorbs the coordination, revisions, planning, and surprises that usually appear anyway. The work still may shift, but the team is far less likely to feel like it failed just because the week behaved like a normal week.

Why this approach helps small firms

The source lists several benefits. Stripped of the old hype, they come down to a few useful outcomes.

First, the team gets a more realistic week. That lowers the constant feeling that people are behind before the work even starts.

Second, planning improves because the week includes the effort that keeps delivery moving. Instead of treating communication and issue handling like invisible labor, you admit they are part of the job.

Third, morale usually improves when people are not expected to hit an impossible paper standard. A team that can absorb normal friction is a team that stays steadier under load.

This is not the same as a utilization target

The 25-15 method is a planning rule, not a scorecard.

That distinction matters. A utilization target is a way of looking at how effort was used. The 25-15 method is a way of building a week before it happens so the plan is realistic. One helps you shape capacity. The other helps you interpret how the capacity got used.

That is why this article belongs next to What’s a healthy utilization rate for a small agency?. They are related, but they are not interchangeable.

One calm application in practice

If you already manage work by Job, Deliverable, Task, and planned effort, the 25-15 method becomes easier to apply because the week has structure before the chaos starts. In workflow management software like Net Net, the point is not to force a rigid formula. It is to keep planned effort realistic enough that normal operating friction has somewhere to go.

The bottom line

The 25-15 method is a simple answer to a common planning mistake. Small teams get hurt when they plan people as if every part of the week belongs to clean, uninterrupted delivery. It does not.

Planning around 25 for direct deliverable effort and 15 for the rest of the work week gives the team room to handle reality without feeling like failure the moment something shifts. That is the method’s real value. It does not make the week lighter. It makes the plan more honest.

FAQ

How many billable hours should I plan per person?

This method says not to plan the full week as direct billable delivery. Its core idea is that a realistic week needs room for meetings, follow-up, issue handling, and internal coordination. The exact fit still depends on your team and work mix, but the point is to avoid pretending every available slot is pure delivery time.

Why shouldn’t I plan my team at full capacity?

Because full-capacity plans break the moment normal work reality shows up. Reviews, revisions, internal coordination, and blocked work are not rare exceptions. They are part of how service firms operate. If you do not leave room for them, the plan will say the team is behind even when the week is behaving normally.

How is the 25-15 method different from a utilization target?

The 25-15 method is for planning capacity ahead of time. A utilization target is for reading how effort was used after or during the week. One shapes the workload. The other helps you interpret the signal. They work together, but they answer different questions.

Does this method make a team less productive?

Usually it does the opposite. It removes the fiction from the plan, which makes delivery steadier and less reactive. Teams often do better when the week accounts for real operating conditions instead of treating every interruption like a failure.