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Glossary

What is the difference between allocation and consumption?

Allocation is what people are committed to; consumption is what they spent. Delivery governance measures allocation and deliberately does not measure consumption.

Allocation answers the questions a manager is accountable for and stays accurate when watched. Consumption — hours logged, per-person completion rates, velocity — stops being accurate the moment people know it is being read.

Related terms

  • FTE-month — One full-time person working for one month — a capacity unit that is comparable across teams and converts directly into a cost forecast.

This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.