Lesson 82.4 made capacity a customer-experience issue: overbooking erodes quality and referrals before it erodes margin. This appendix is the preflight — fixed scope, timeline, revisions, step table, maximum concurrent load, and the trigger that pauses sales before delivery breaks.

The blank sheet

# SERVICE-CAPACITY.md — [Service name], [date]

## Fixed scope (what this engagement is)
- Buyer + starting state: ___
- Finished deliverable: ___
- Included: ___ / excluded: ___
- Revision rule (count + window): ___

## Timeline (calendar, not vibes)
- Total length: ___ / key milestones: ___
- Client dependencies (what you need, by when): ___

## Step table (every step timed, owned, and costed)
| Step | Owner | Hours | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ___ | ___ | ___ | ___ |
| Prep / delivery / follow-up | | | |
| Total | — | ___ hrs | Effective rate: price ÷ total hrs = $___/hr |

## Capacity
- Max concurrent engagements: ___
- Currently booked: ___ / next open slot: ___

## Pause trigger (sales stop here)
- "When ___ , pause new sales until ___ ."

The step table is the whole discipline. List every step — discovery, research, setup, delivery, write-up, revisions, follow-up — with an owner and honest hours. A service quoted at "two hours on Zoom" that consumes eleven hours end to end is not a $500 engagement; at $45/hour effective it is a lesson in underpricing. The revision rule ("one round within seven days; re-scopes re-quoted") belongs in writing before enthusiasm makes it infinite. Max-concurrent is how many of these you can run well at once — usually one or two for a solo builder — and the pause trigger converts that number into a sentence sales obeys.

Filled example: weekend research workshop (illustrative fictional example)

A solo analyst productized a recurring request — "teach my five-person team the source-linked workflow" — into a fixed workshop:

# SERVICE-CAPACITY.md — Team Research Workshop, 2026-10-04

## Fixed scope
- Buyer: five-person research/content team, drowning in unsourced drafts
- Deliverable: half-day live workshop + configured workspace + 30-day follow-up
- Included: pre-call audit of 3 sample briefs, workspace setup, session,
  cheat sheet, one follow-up review call
- Excluded: ongoing brief production, custom tooling, extra teams
- Revision rule: one follow-up round within 30 days; extra sessions re-quoted

## Timeline
- Total: 2 weeks door to door / milestones: audit (day 3) → session (day 10)
  → follow-up review (day 24)
- Client dependencies: 3 sample briefs + workspace access by day 2, or clock slips

## Step table
| Step | Owner | Hours | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery + brief audit | analyst | 3 | read 3 briefs, log failure patterns |
| Workspace setup | analyst | 2 | templates, watchlists, permissions |
| Deck + exercises | analyst | 4 | tailored to audit findings |
| Live session | analyst | 4 | half day incl. Q&A buffer |
| Notes + cheat sheet | analyst | 2 | delivered within 48h |
| Follow-up review call | analyst | 1.5 | week 4, recorded |
| Admin + scheduling | analyst | 1.5 | invoicing, comms, reschedules |
| Total | — | 18 hrs | $1,200 ÷ 18 = ~$67/hr effective |

## Capacity
- Max concurrent: 2 workshops in flight (never 2 live sessions same week)
- Currently booked: 1 / next open slot: week of Oct 20

## Pause trigger
- "When 2 workshops are in flight, pause new sales until one passes
   the live session — waitlist with a dated slot, no exceptions."

The price logic is visible: $1,200 against 18 hours, with prep outweighing delivery. Without the table, the analyst would have quoted the 4-hour session and donated the other 14. The pause trigger protects the waitlisted buyer as much as the booked one — a third concurrent workshop would steal prep from all three.

Rules and failure modes

• Time the invisible work first: prep, setup, admin, and follow-up. Visible delivery is rarely more than a third of the total.
• Write the client-dependency clock-slip line ("or the clock slips") and enforce it once. Clients respect the boundary you hold; they test the one you waive.
• Recompute the effective rate every quarter against current tool and provider costs — fee schedules like Gumroad pricing and packaging logic in the Paddle pricing strategy guide change what "delivery costs" means.
• The classic failure is the "just one more" yes at full capacity. That yes borrows quality from every booked client to fund one more invoice. The pause trigger exists for the week you most want to ignore it.