How One Department Learned to Cap Projects After Running 41 With Capacity for 12

A department head discovered their organisation had 41 active projects at the start of the year, despite having realistic capacity for only around 12. The investment committee had been approving projects individually against budget without ever measuring available staff capacity, making each case hard to refuse on its own merits. This led to chronic overcommitment, where six key specialists were spread across 19 plans, doubling elapsed times and eroding the financial assumptions behind approved business cases. Cancelling approved projects proved culturally difficult, so the portfolio quietly bloated with dormant work that was never formally stopped. The team resolved this by publishing a capacity statement tied to staffing, maintaining a visible prioritised queue, and tracking work completed rather than percentage progress — resulting in four cancellations, six deliberate pauses, and nine completions in a single quarter.