Which means most of what moves your runway is a hire date, a raise, or a decision about who is charged where. Waterline models all three on the month the money leaves.
Start date, salary, fully loaded cost, and the raises you have already agreed. Move one hire from March to June and the whole curve shifts — payroll, the burn split, every milestone that depended on them, and the range.
| Modelled | |
|---|---|
| Start and end dates | including people who have not joined yet |
| Fully loaded cost | salary plus the multiplier you actually pay |
| Agreed raises | dated, so they land when they land |
| Allocation | which project each person is charged to |
Move one hire date
Delaying two hires a quarter, modelled as a scenario before anybody is told.
If you run funded work, some of your people are charged to a project and some are not. The ones who are not still cost exactly what they cost — and nobody is reimbursing you for them.
Waterline says so plainly: how many people are not charged to any project, and what that is costing you a month. It is a quiet number in most organizations, and it is usually found by an audit or a cash crunch rather than by looking.
Stated once, on the payroll tab, with a way to fix it. Not repeated at you.
A hire you have not made yet is the easiest thing in a plan to move, which makes it the first thing worth testing when a month looks tight.