WORKLOAD SPIKE PREDICTION
Preparing for the peak is work, and the peak is the one nobody predicted.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which arrangements are made against a forecast of demand built from what has already happened, so the preparation matches the peaks that have occurred rather than the one that will.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
The event being prepared for is not in the record the preparation is built from.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
The planning is unhurried; what fails is the day it was planning for.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
ASYMMETRIC
Over-resourcing and under-resourcing are noticed by different people at different times.
OPERATOR STATE
SUPERVISORY
The person planning will not be the person meeting the day.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALStaffing is planned from attendance history and the event that matters is not in it.
ENERGYCrewing is set against past demand profiles that contain no example of the case being prepared for.
PUBLIC SERVICECapacity is planned from previous volumes for a period unlike the previous ones.
LOGISTICSPeak resourcing is set from last year's peak, which was itself resourced from the year before.
TELECOMCapacity headroom is sized from observed maxima that were themselves capped by capacity.
RETAILStaffing for a period is forecast from a history that never contained this period.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever staffing and capacity are set from history. The history is the only evidence there is, and the event that matters is the one it does not contain.
What stays unresolved is how much to hold against a shape that has not appeared — resourcing for the observed maximum sits idle most of the time, and resourcing for the middle is a plan that fails on the day it is needed.