Why We Built Supervisible: From Google Sheets to AI Team Planning Tool

As a production engineer, I've always been obsessed with improving processes. There's something deeply satisfying about finding inefficiencies and systematically optimizing them away. But it wasn't until I discovered the marginal gains theory that this obsession truly crystallized into a methodology.

The Marginal Gains Revelation

You've probably heard the story of the British cycling team that dominated the Tour de France for years. They didn't achieve this through revolutionary breakthroughs, but through marginal gains—improving every tiny detail by just 1%. Better bike seats, optimized nutrition timing, even the right pillows for better sleep. Individually, these improvements were almost insignificant. Combined, they were unstoppable.

This philosophy resonated deeply with me, especially working in the habit industry where we see firsthand how small, consistent changes compound into remarkable transformations over time. It's never about the dramatic gesture; it's about the daily discipline of getting slightly better.

When Our Team Hit the Complexity Wall

When our team grew beyond 10-12 people, something shifted. The informal coordination that worked perfectly with a smaller group suddenly felt chaotic. Who was available for the new project? Were we overloading Sarah while Mike had bandwidth? How could we accurately price projects when we couldn't even predict our capacity?

Being a process-oriented person, I naturally turned to what I knew best: Google Sheets. We built elaborate spreadsheets to track workload planning, resource allocation, and capacity management. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. We could finally answer questions like:

• Can we take on this new project without affecting existing ones?
• How many hours does each team member have available?
• Are some employees overloaded while others have less work?
• Who has the right expertise for specific tasks?

The Google Sheets Era: Innovation Through Necessity

As we scaled to 15-20 people, our Google Sheets system became increasingly sophisticated. We added scripts, automated calculations, and built custom dashboards. For two years, we lived and breathed these spreadsheets. They handled our freelancer management, budget tracking, deadline monitoring, and team communication needs.

Our system could tell us whether to hire more freelancers for a project, how much to charge based on actual workload, and which tasks were falling behind schedule. It provided the visibility we desperately needed into our operations.

But here's the thing about building solutions in Google Sheets: you eventually hit a wall. The maintenance overhead becomes crushing, collaboration gets messy, and scaling requires exponential effort.

The Great Tool Hunt

Convinced that surely someone had built the perfect solution, we embarked on an exhaustive search through existing project management and resource planning tools. We tried everything—from simple task managers to enterprise workforce planning platforms.

The disappointing reality? Nothing came close to matching the organization and functionality of our custom Google Sheets system. Every tool felt like it was built for someone else's workflow, forcing us to adapt our proven processes to fit their rigid frameworks.

This was our "aha" moment. We hadn't built something mediocre in Google Sheets—we had actually solved the problem better than anyone else in the market.

Riding the AI Wave

The emergence of AI-powered coding tools gave us the final push we needed. Suddenly, building custom software didn't require a massive development team or months of planning. We could leverage AI to rapidly prototype, iterate, and build exactly what we needed.

Why accept "good enough" when we could build "exactly right"?

Enter Supervisible

That's how Supervisible was born—not from a business plan or market research, but from years of lived frustration and incremental improvements. We built it to solve the real challenges we faced as project managers and team leaders.

Supervisible addresses the core questions that kept us up at night:

Workload Planning & Capacity: Real-time visibility into team availability and project capacity, with intelligent distribution recommendations.

Resource Allocation: Smart matching of people with projects based on skills, availability, and workload balance.

Freelancer & Hiring Management: Seamless integration of contractors and full-time staff in planning and budgeting.

Budget & Cost Management: Accurate project pricing based on actual capacity and historical data.

Deadlines & Delivery: Proactive identification of potential delays with actionable solutions.

Communication & Visibility: Centralized dashboards that keep everyone aligned on priorities and progress.

The Philosophy Behind the Tool

At its core, Supervisible embodies the marginal gains philosophy. Every feature exists because it solves a real problem we encountered. We focused on simplicity over endless features, deep work over busywork, and empowering people over just tracking numbers.

We believe that organizing work should be about empowering people, not treating them as numbers on a spreadsheet. Every hour spent struggling with clunky tools is an hour stolen from creating something extraordinary.

Looking Forward

Building Supervisible has been one of the most rewarding challenges of my career. It represents everything I believe about process improvement: start with real problems, iterate relentlessly, and never accept "good enough" when you can build something better.

If you're struggling with team planning, workload management, or resource allocation, I'd love for you to try Supervisible. It's built by people who've lived these challenges, for people who refuse to accept the status quo.

After all, the best tools should feel like they were built exactly for you—because in our case, they literally were.

Interested in trying Supervisible for your team? Visit supervisible.com to request early access and see how we're reimagining team planning for agencies.

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