Several years ago I was in a startup and they explained to us about roadmap growth. That in the first year a startup should earn XXX money and the year after it should be YYY. the increment in money should be Z% between quarters, etc... and this way you can measure, more or less if a company is on the right path.
Nowadays I run a project for a company who has been around for 13 years, so it is doing fine. My project is new in the company - only 2 years - and there is an annoying pattern I have noticed.
- the company gets more customers
- The amount of tasks increases
- I ask for more resources
- the company is not convinced I need more resources
- the project experiences a failure to make a deadline due to lack of resources
- the company gets half the resources I really need.
I think, perhaps the company has a difficulty to assess how many resources this project should have, and the resources we do get always come too little too late.
I would like to find something like a "growth plan" similar to the financial one I saw at the startup but without money. something that will not be as debatable as the process we have now and that will break this vicious unhealthy cycle.
It can be a rule of thumb, or some other model we should follow, but anything will do at this point.
For example - for a social network you will need 1 developer per 1000 users.. this might not be true, but it is a plan to follow. Something that we can measure and decide upon.
My units cannot be money or users (even though I would like to hear answers about them as well, perhaps I will catch the drift and apply it to myself)
My units should be tasks/responsibilities per resources. perhaps man-hours per resources.
and the result should enable us to say "if everything goes according to plan, we will need another resource within the next 2 months.." - and so prepare ourselves and start interviewing beforehand.
EDIT
I have recently heard about the term working capital
. I can't exactly understand if it is relevant for this question, but sounds like it should.
If someone can help me understand this it would be great.