To balance a team’s workload, review what each person must deliver, how much work each item contains, when it is due and what is blocking it. Task counts help you find the work, but they do not measure effort. Compare similar deliverables, ask about remaining work and agree what to move before adding another commitment.
Start with the commitment, not the task count
A teammate with two tasks may have a heavier week than a teammate with eight. One task might be a complete presentation; another might be a quick correction. An assignment list is a useful starting point, but treating every row as the same amount of work can make a tidy dashboard hide an unrealistic plan.
Begin with a concrete question: what has this person promised to finish in the period we are planning? Look at the deliverable, its quantity, the expected review and the deadline. Ask the person what remains, rather than assuming that a task marked In progress is nearly finished. Work can also be waiting for a client decision, reference material or another colleague’s output.
This is a planning conversation, not an individual productivity ranking. Quantity describes an output; it does not capture difficulty, quality, accessibility needs or all the support work someone contributes. A fair review makes those differences visible before changing the plan.
- Choose the week or delivery period you need to plan.
- List the open commitments for each relevant person.
- Confirm the expected output and what is still needed to finish it.
Use quantities to understand the work, then compare like with like
Here is an illustrative planning example, not a customer story: one designer has a 24-slide presentation and two image corrections due this week. Another has six simple banner adaptations. Counting three tasks against six says little about the balance. Recording slides, images and adaptations gives the discussion more context, but it still does not tell you the hours or complexity involved.
In besteam, the kind of work and quantity belong to tasks, sub-tasks and mini-tasks. Choose the work you recognise and record the quantity that describes the deliverable. When the agreed scope changes, update the task’s own quantity and save it so colleagues review the same expectation.
Review similar kinds of work together. Do not add slides, pages and images into a single meaningful-looking capacity number. Also decide which level owns the deliverable quantity: if a parent task says 24 slides and its child tasks describe those same slides, summing both levels counts the output twice. Use the detailed records to check what a total actually includes.
- Agree a consistent meaning for the unit within each kind of work.
- Keep the expected quantity current when the scope changes.
- Check parent and child items before adding their quantities together.
Choose date filters that answer the planning question
A report of tasks added last week answers a different question from a list of tasks due next week. Confusing the two can leave older commitments outside the view just when they need attention. For upcoming delivery, start with Due date and your planning period. Review current statuses and the selected people or projects, then inspect the records behind the numbers.
besteam Reports offers a Date to match field with Work item added, Start date, Due date, Completed date and Last updated. People, project and status filters help narrow the accessible work. Choose the basis deliberately: Work item added is the creation date, not an assignment-history log; Last updated is not a measure of time spent.
A due-date filter also leaves out tasks with no due date. Review those separately before declaring someone available. The current assignees and status describe the records now; a completed-date selection does not recreate every historical assignment. Shared assignments are another reason to inspect the task rather than add person-level counts into a unique-work total.
- Use Due date for upcoming commitments and Completed date for recorded completions.
- Review undated open tasks separately.
- Check the people, project and status filters before interpreting a total.
Resolve the bottleneck before moving the assignment
When someone appears overloaded, transferring a task is only one possible response. A missing brief may be the real delay. A reviewer may need to make a decision. Two urgent requests may need the owner to choose an order. Moving the assignment without resolving the dependency can simply move the waiting time to another person.
Use the task discussion to record the blocker, the decision needed and the next action. Split a large deliverable into sub-tasks when the parts have genuinely different owners or review steps. Keep the project access appropriate so the person taking over can see the work and its context.
In besteam, the workspace owner and project managers manage project access; people assigned access to a project can contribute to its work. Use that access model when reallocating work, and keep financial permissions separate. An operational quantity update does not require permission to see service prices. Agree any new deadline with the people affected rather than silently moving a date to make a chart look healthier.
- Ask what is preventing the next useful step.
- Choose whether to unblock, split, defer or reassign the work.
- Record the decision, responsible person and agreed deadline on the relevant task.
Finish the review with a plan the team can recognise
A workload review should end with a small set of decisions, not another report nobody uses. Confirm what stays committed, what has moved and what still needs a decision. Ask each person whether the revised plan matches their understanding, including work that may sit outside the selected projects.
Use besteam’s task views and Reports to return to the underlying records and export a filtered table to Excel when a planning discussion needs a snapshot. Remember that an export is a point-in-time copy: subsequent task changes belong in the shared workspace, not in a competing spreadsheet that gradually becomes a second source of truth.
Repeat the review when priorities or scope change. Task counts, quantities and statuses can support judgement, but they do not automatically calculate a person’s available hours or guarantee a balanced week. The useful outcome is a clear, realistic agreement about what happens next.
- Confirm the next commitments and any explicit trade-offs.
- Check that the shared tasks reflect the agreed quantities, assignees and dates.
- Set a time to revisit unresolved blockers and newly arriving work.
Common questions
Does the person with the most tasks always have the heaviest workload?
No. Task size, quantity, complexity, review effort and blockers vary. Use task counts to find commitments, then discuss remaining effort and compare similar deliverables.
Can I add all task quantities together to measure capacity?
Only when the units and scope are meaningfully comparable. Mixing pages, slides and images, or counting the same output at parent and child levels, can produce a misleading total.
Which date filter should I use to plan next week?
Due date is a useful starting point for commitments due in that week. Also review undated open tasks and work outside the selected projects. Creation and last-updated dates answer different questions.
Can everyone see the same workload report in besteam?
Reports follow the logged-in user’s permitted data. Owners and contributors may therefore see different records. Grant the appropriate project access before expecting someone to take over its tasks.