Four Figures Read Together
Utilisation, realisation, yield and committed capacity. Each covers the others' blind spot, and together they cannot be moved by recoding an hour.
The three measured figures, multiplied, for one team and one quarter
72.4%
Numerator: Fee income collected, divided by standard rate, in hours
Denominator: Available hours after leave and committed internal time
Utilisation 81.6%, realisation 88.7%, and the product of the two.
Neither component can be improved by recoding an hour: reclassification raises utilisation and lowers yield. Every available individual response shows up in this set as a divergence rather than as an improvement. One firm's own quarter, not a benchmark.
No single figure describes how a firm is using its capacity. Four do, and each one covers a blind spot in the others.
The measure discussed in “Four Figures Read Together” becomes more credible when its source records are timely and reviewable. A professional-services team assessing review the workflow on this page for how to monitor employees without being intrusive can connect time with projects and work categories, while documenting the definition separately so the dashboard does not silently decide what utilisation means.
Read together they also resist every response in the behaviour catalogue, because no individual's recording decision moves more than one of them in a helpful direction.
As a separate benchmark for “Four Figures Read Together”, see official Scrum Guide. External guidance is most useful when it prompts a specific check rather than replacing case-by-case judgement.
The four
Utilisation: chargeable hours over available hours. Realisation: invoiced value over recorded value. Yield: collected fee over chargeable hours. Committed capacity: the share of capacity the firm decided to commit to client work.
Three measured, one chosen.
What each covers
Utilisation sees idle capacity and nothing about value. Realisation sees discounting and nothing about volume. Yield sees the worth of an hour and nothing about how many there were. Committed capacity sets the level the other three should be read against.
Why the set resists gaming
Recoding an ambiguous hour to a client code raises utilisation and lowers yield. Deferring internal work raises utilisation now and lowers yield later. Overrun raises utilisation and lowers realisation.
Every available individual response shows up as a divergence rather than as an improvement.
The divergence as the signal
That is the practical value of the set. The interesting event is not a level but two of the four moving apart.
Utilisation up and yield down is the commonest and the most informative, and it is invisible if only the first is reported.
The derived figure
Collected fee over available hours: revenue per unit of capacity. The product of the three measured figures.
It is the single number closest to what a firm wants to know, and it cannot be improved by any form of recording.
Why not just report that one
Because it does not decompose. A fall could be volume, discounting or rate, and the three remedies are different.
The four exist to decompose the one, which is why both belong on the page.
The page
Four figures, by team, monthly, with the prior period beside them and the largest movement named in a sentence.
No thresholds. One sentence of narrative. A page of this shape takes an hour to produce and about two minutes to read.
The lag labels
Utilisation is current. Realisation lags a quarter. Yield lags with collection. Committed capacity is a decision, not a measurement.
Each needs its label on the page, or the reader builds a composite picture from figures of different ages without knowing it.
What to put in appraisals from this page
Nothing. The page is for operational decisions at team level.
Individual accountability goes on outcomes recorded by somebody else, for the reasons the person section sets out at length.
Where the four come from
Chargeable hours and available hours from the timesheet and contracts. Invoiced and collected value from finance. Standard rates from the rate card. Committed capacity from the plan.
No new system, and usually no new data collection.
The implementation order
Utilisation and realisation first, on one line, with their product. Then yield. Then state committed capacity explicitly.
Each step is useful on its own and the first one takes a spreadsheet row.
What to do when two of them disagree
That is the point of having four. A disagreement is a finding rather than a data problem.
Utilisation up, yield down: hours are being added without value. Realisation down, utilisation flat: a pricing or scoping question. Yield up, utilisation down: the firm may be declining work it should take.
Three patterns, three different conversations, and all three invisible in any single figure.
Building the page the first time
Pull chargeable and available hours from the timesheet and the contract data. Pull invoiced and collected value from finance. Divide.
The first version is a spreadsheet and it should stay one until the shape has settled, because a figure built into a reporting system is much harder to change than one in a sheet.
Most firms find the first version takes a day and produces at least one finding that nobody had seen. That finding is usually a divergence that had been running for several quarters in plain sight, split across two reports that no single person read together.
What the set does not include
Anything about quality, client satisfaction or capability. The four are about capacity and money.
That is a boundary rather than an omission: the quality figures belong on their own page, for the reasons the earlier note sets out, and combining them into a single index would make all of them moveable.
Two short pages beat one composite, and the second one gets read.
What a firm gains
The ability to tell the four states apart: busy and paid, busy and underpaid, quiet and well priced, quiet and cheap.
A single ratio cannot distinguish them, and most firms have spent years responding to whichever one they happened to be in as though it were the second.