What is a reflow?

The problem a reflow solves

Any schedule is a snapshot of assumptions: who is available, what work exists, what is urgent. Reality edits those assumptions constantly. Someone calls in sick, a client file lands late, an urgent job appears. In most firms a change means a human rebuilds the plan by hand, so in practice the plan is only rebuilt when things are calm, which is exactly when it matters least.

What happens in a reflow

• A change lands: a leave request is approved, a task overruns, a new job is committed.
• The engine finds every person and task the change touches, and only those.
• Each affected schedule is rebuilt against that person's real remaining capacity, respecting lunch, meetings, reserve and buffer.
• Work slides within its safe room to move. Downstream steps shift together, so dependencies stay honest.
• Everyone's daily plan is current again, usually in seconds, with no human doing any of it.

The rule a reflow never breaks

A reflow never overbooks a person, and it never silently moves a promised client deadline. When the work genuinely cannot fit, the reflow stops and asks the manager one question, with the ways out attached: extend the deadline, reassign the work, or split the task. The manager always outranks the engine. That single rule is the difference between a schedule people trust and a schedule people ignore.

Why it changes how a firm runs

With reflows, the plan stops being a weekly artefact and becomes a living system. Managers stop spending evenings replanning. Staff open their day and the plan is simply correct. And utilisation, margin and capacity are measured against reality as it happens, not reconstructed from timesheets a month later.