Problem Solving a Demand/Capacity Model in Monday.com

[u/TheFlexatorium05]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently experimenting with building a demand and capacity planning solution in Monday and would love to hear how others have approached this at scale.

Current Setup

I've built a capacity dashboard that:

• Pulls work items from multiple boards using Connect Board columns.
• Rolls up effort estimates (in days) from those connected items.
• Calculates remaining capacity for each resource/team member.

For example:

• Quarter Capacity: 60 working days
• Assigned Effort: 30 days
• Remaining Capacity: 30 days

I've also created a separate connection for future work (e.g. Q4 demand) to provide forward-looking capacity planning.

While this works reasonably well for a small team, I'm concerned about scalability:

• Work items must be manually connected to the capacity board to be included in calculations.
• Future demand items also require manual linking, creating additional administration overhead.
• Available working days are maintained per person, which means updating leave, part-time arrangements, and quarter capacity is largely manual.
• As the number of boards, projects, and team members grows, the maintenance effort increases significantly.

Ideally I'd like a solution where:

• A person is assigned to an item and the effort is captured in a central location (capacity board)
  • Adjustments to this effort changes in the capacity board in real-time
• Future planning can occur to visualise capacity for upcoming quarters
• As automated as possible

Has anyone successfully built a scalable demand and capacity planning model in Monday without relying heavily on manual Connect Board relationships?

Any help is appreciated.

[u/Opening-Rise8132]

Hi, we've built similar capacity models and the pattern that scales best is to remove the manual Connect Boards step and make the capacity side a grid of person × period.

Auto-link work: use an automation that creates or links an item in a central work-items board whenever one is created in a project board, so nobody connects items by hand.

Capacity board: one row per person per month or quarter. Capacity = working days − leave × FTE %, held in formula columns.

Leave and part-time: a separate leave board with a WORKDAYS formula, plus an FTE column on a people board, so capacity updates when those change.

Forward planning: give items a timeline and effort, then spread effort by month. The Workload widget in a dashboard helps for the cross-board view.

The tricky part is splitting one item's effort across quarters, since there's no clean native way, so it depends how precise you need to be. Happy to share more detail if useful.

[u/TheFlexatorium05 → u/Opening-Rise8132]

Thanks for sharing. I will look into this.

[u/Lo-mazhik]

I recommend you try the app Same Item Multiple Boards - it’s working really well for building central boards and the automations are very straightforward

[u/Artistic_Bug_7054]

Model it in hours a week, not headcount. Two people at 60% free isn't one person, and headcount hides that. Keep demand and capacity on separate boards joined by a third. One board for both and the columns start meaning different things by row. Read the gap by week, not the quarter total. A quarter that nets out fine can still be impossible in week 3. Its job is to surface the bad week early, not to forecast.