Your question is Manage Team Bench and Utilization. Take a moment with it on the right.
Talk me through your thinking if you like. When you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes).
You manage an engineering team in a services-based B2B software organization where revenue depends on keeping engineers staffed on billable client work while preserving enough capacity for internal platform investments. Over the last 2 months, team utilization fell from 78% to 64%, while average bench time for unassigned engineers rose from 9 days to 21 days. At the same time, project demand shifted: one large client implementation ended early, two new deals slipped by 3 weeks, and internal work on the delivery platform expanded from 12% to 20% of total engineering hours. Leadership wants to know whether this is a temporary staffing mismatch or a structural planning problem.
How would you define and manage bench time and utilization for this team, and how would you investigate the recent change to determine what is driving it and what actions you would recommend?