Resource Radar case study
Compare planned work with the time each person actually has available. Change a draft to address an overload, then review it before saving the plan.
The product choice: Make time constraints visible while leaving scope and staffing decisions with the team. Try the sample · Follow the walkthrough.
Experience and decision
My program management work has included cross-functional planning, dependencies and delivery risks. Resource Radar isolates the capacity conversation that comes before a credible commitment. This is a separate fictional portfolio exercise; its records, rules and results do not reproduce an employer system.
Decision to challenge: If a person is overloaded, which scope or commitment should change? Clearing a red cell by removing work does not resolve the customer need or secure the affected owner’s agreement.
The product problem
Northstar is a fictional B2B SaaS company planning several launch initiatives across a small cross-functional team. A typical staffing sheet can show assignments while hiding the constraints that matter: a five-day week is not five available project days when time off and operating work are already committed.
Resource Radar makes that arithmetic visible. The working surface starts with people and weeks, subtracts time off and non-project commitments, then compares the remaining person-days with initiative allocations. Draft edits stay separate from the applied baseline so planning changes are deliberate and reversible.
Decision brief
| Decision | Chosen compromise and cost | Evidence needed for the next investment |
|---|---|---|
| Make a constrained plan reviewable before a commitment | Use a browser-local, four-week fictional scenario rather than a connected staffing system. It makes the arithmetic inspectable but cannot represent a team's source of truth. | Five formative participants can explain why a seeded conflict exists and distinguish an editable draft from the applied plan. |
| Preserve choice instead of recommending a person or date | Show allocation consequences and initiative risk without choosing who should move work. This leaves the planning conversation with the team. | Participants use the consequence to reason about a tradeoff without reading it as a delivery forecast. |
| Require an explicit apply action | Keep a draft separate from the baseline. The extra step adds friction, but avoids treating exploration as a commitment. | Participants can intentionally apply or undo a scenario without believing a draft silently changed the plan. |
My role as Product Manager
I defined the product concept, planning model, interaction requirements, information hierarchy, sample scenarios, acceptance criteria, and validation plan. AI tools assisted with implementation and verification. This is a portfolio demonstration, not a record of a shipped Northstar product or customer outcome.
Proposed measures
Begin with five formative sessions to inspect conflict diagnosis and baseline-versus-draft understanding. The proposed diagnostic target is four of five evaluators correctly explaining a conflict within 60 seconds. A later ten-person study would test whether nine of ten can edit and apply a scenario without help. The sample must surface all known zero-availability assignments, without implying productivity or burnout diagnoses.
See the evaluation plan for denominators and guardrails and the validation plan for the study sequence. These are proposed targets; no user study or production measurement has been performed.
Evidence limits and next investment decision
The sample demonstrates inspectable arithmetic and controls; repository checks are software evidence only. It does not show practitioner understanding, adoption, or delivery outcomes. The next decision is whether five formative sessions show that participants can explain a conflict and intentionally move from draft to applied plan. If they cannot, simplify the workflow before investing in history, import, or shared-system concepts. Review the discovery plan, decision record, risk register, and validation plan.
Capacity arithmetic should lead to a scope conversation: removing Noah's conflicting allocation clears a cell but leaves the initiative's work unresolved. Ask participants which commitment they would move, reduce or defer and what owner agreement is missing. Before investing in shared planning, compare that reasoning with their current staffing sheet and estimate the ongoing work of maintaining availability. If the conflict is understood but the missing decision is ownership or sequencing, address that operating process first. A feasible allocation remains insufficient evidence of a credible delivery date.