{"id":332,"date":"2026-04-10T15:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T22:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/?post_type=lsvr_kba&#038;p=332"},"modified":"2026-04-10T16:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T23:03:29","slug":"deep-planner-vs-excel-how-automation-beats-spreadsheets","status":"publish","type":"lsvr_kba","link":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/knowledge-base\/deep-planner-vs-excel-how-automation-beats-spreadsheets\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Planner vs Excel: How Automation Beats Spreadsheets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Software development is a dynamic industry where processes require high agility and adaptation. However, companies are tied by hard limits, such as budget or timing constraints, and thus demand more predictability from teams in regard to business value delivery. Program increment planning, for example, is the approach where teams define features that they commit to deliver within a specific time, typically a quarter. Another example is sprint planning, which defines the tickets to be delivered by a team in a shorter time span.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Role of Excel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Excel surprisingly remains a popular solution for many teams and managers to calculate the delivery output for a given time span. There are two approaches that are extremely popular for planning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Manual Planning: <\/strong>A person, usually a project manager, prompts the development teams to provide an approximate number of days for executing a ticket. Afterward, he visually identifies the point on a timeline when the work can be completed and enters the start and end dates that are calculated based on the available slot and ticket duration into a spreadsheet.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Velocity-based Planning:<\/strong> This approach is usually executed by a development team and a product owner. The team first calculates the velocity of a sprint, or program increment, in a spreadsheet, a number that constitutes the total capacity of all members of the team. Meanwhile, technical leads assign a high-level estimate for priority tickets in the backlog. Once both actions are complete, the product owner selects tickets for a sprint by maximizing the output based on the high-level estimate of the tickets and the sprint velocity of the team.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What\u2019s wrong with spreadsheet planning?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Both approaches imply a focus on the team capacity usage optimization. While it seems simple and intuitive to do so, the more important indicator is the business value output. For that indicator, there are many more factors that can affect it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Multi-tasking: <\/strong>Multiple studies state that multi-tasking slows down team performance and decreases productivity by double digits.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Uncertainty: <\/strong>Increased uncertainty in requirements often leads to late deliveries.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Bottlenecks:<\/strong> Missing even a single dependency can cause major turbulence for the entire plan.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Tedious planning:<\/strong> It takes a lot of time to calculate and update spreadsheets, especially when the company scales, which often delays important decisions mid-sprint and traps teams with unrealistic dates<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>The effect of just one or more of these factors can easily lead to missed delivery dates and unmet expectations for stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Deep Planner: an alternative, automated solution that is designed for predictable delivery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a solution that helps build much more reliable schedules. Deep Planner is based on advanced technology focused on delivering the maximum of business value with tight timing, resource constraints, and high uncertainty. It employs the following optimizations to the usual sprint or PI planning process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Resource leveling<\/strong> for maximum teams&#8217; productivity<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Adding buffers for tickets with high uncertainty<\/strong> to minimize local disruptions<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Eliminating bottlenecks<\/strong> to ensure smooth and continuous execution<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By using these tweaks in the process, one can improve productivity by 20-30% vs regular spreadsheets, case studies show <a href=\"https:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/handle\/1721.1\/34805\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Managing such optimizations manually is mathematically complex. Deep Planner automates this logic so you can focus on the work, not the formulas. This makes planning not just accurate and reliable but also a frictionless, intuitive experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To learn more and sign up to Deep Planner visit <a href=\"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\">the Deep Planner website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Excel remains a highly popular tool to generate software delivery roadmaps and sprint plans. However, such plans often slip and result in expensive consequences for companies. A better alternative is to use tools that generate forecasts based on constraints and realistic approximations. Use Deep Planner to make roadmap predictions and align teams quickly without tedious setup. Follow the <a href=\"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\">link<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Software development is a dynamic industry where processes require high agility and adaptation. However, companies are tied by hard limits, such as budget or timing constraints, and thus demand more predictability from teams in regard to business value delivery. Program increment planning, for example, is the approach where teams define features that they commit to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"lsvr_kba_cat":[8],"lsvr_kba_tag":[11,9,10],"class_list":["post-332","lsvr_kba","type-lsvr_kba","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","lsvr_kba_cat-articles","lsvr_kba_tag-agile","lsvr_kba_tag-excel","lsvr_kba_tag-productivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/lsvr_kba"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/332\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_cat?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepplanner.io\/documentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_tag?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}