Department Capability Heatmap
Turn your skills matrix into a color-coded heatmap by team, shift, or location so leaders can spot well-covered skills and single-points-of-failure at a glance, then export a dated snapshot for planning meetings.
A login-protected tool that computes coverage per skill x group, renders a configurable heatmap, lets a leader drill from a red cell to the actual people, requires leader approval before a snapshot is circulated, and exports CSV/PNG for staffing and training decisions.
Before you start
- A skills matrix (who can do what), even if it currently lives in a spreadsheet
- A way to tag each person by team / shift / location
- An idea of your coverage thresholds (what counts as strong, adequate, at-risk)
The problem this kills
You manage people, but you cannot actually see your coverage. Your skills data lives in a spreadsheet with a tab per supervisor, color-coded by hand, last updated who-knows-when. When someone resigns, calls in sick, or asks for a transfer, you find out the hard way that they were the only person on second shift who could run the line, close the books, or handle the escalation.
Leadership asks "where are we one-deep?" and the honest answer is "give me a day to pull it together." By the time you have, the staffing meeting is over and the answer is stale.
This tool gives you a one-look picture: rows of skills, columns of teams / shifts / locations, every cell colored by how strong your coverage is. Green where you're deep, yellow where you're thin, red where you're one-deep or have a gap. You see the risk before it bites you.
What you'll build
A small web app, just for your team, that:
- Holds your skills matrix - people, skills, and proficiency - with each person tagged by team, shift, and/or location.
- Computes coverage for every skill x group combination using thresholds you set (how many capable people counts as strong vs. adequate vs. at-risk).
- Renders an interactive heatmap: skills down the side, groups across the top, cells colored by coverage strength.
- Lets you click a red or yellow cell and drill straight into the named people behind it, so you know exactly who to cross-train.
- Requires a leader to review and approve a snapshot - including the thresholds in force - before it's saved and circulated for staffing or training decisions.
- Saves each approved snapshot with its date, so you can compare this quarter to last and watch coverage improve (or erode).
- Exports the heatmap to CSV and PNG for planning decks and offline review.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a complete, paste-and-go runbook for an AI coding agent (Claude Code). You do not write code - you paste, answer questions, and approve.
It opens by interviewing you about your business. Before it builds anything, the plan makes the agent ask about your actual skills matrix, how you group people (team, shift, location, or some mix), the exact names and codes you use, your real and peak headcounts, and what "covered" actually means in your operation. It reflects a short tailored spec back to you for a thumbs-up - so the tool fits your org, not a generic template.
From there it walks step by step through: the data model, importing your matrix, the coverage math, the heatmap UI, the drill-down, the approval gate, dated snapshots and comparison, and the CSV/PNG export - each step ending in a ready-to-copy prompt.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
This is not a throwaway spreadsheet macro. The plan bakes in the controls that make a tool safe to run a department on:
- Login so only your team can open it.
- Row-level security so each organization only ever sees its own people and skills.
- A full audit trail - who changed a threshold, who approved which snapshot, and when.
- A human approval gate - the tool computes the heatmap, but a leader must review and approve a snapshot before it's saved and circulated. The AI drafts; a person commits.
- Duplicate guards so the same skill x group x snapshot-date can't be recorded twice.
Who it's for
Ops directors, plant and site managers, and team leads who need a one-look capability picture across teams, shifts, or locations - and who are tired of hand-coloring spreadsheets the night before the staffing meeting.
You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the plan interview you.