Regular vacations are essential for recharging, and many professionals prefer the warmer, longer days of summer to take a break. But in tech-driven workplaces where collaboration, uptime and meeting deadlines are key, leaders must strike a balance between encouraging needed time off and ensuring business continuity. Without proper planning, tech team members being out can cause major disruptions to workflow, essential services and project timelines.
Fortunately, there are proven strategies that can help team members self-manage their summer schedules while maintaining productivity. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share how they help their team members take ownership of vacation planning to keep projects on track and daily work running smoothly.
1. Incorporate Extended Vacations Into Quarterly Planning And OKRs
One strategy is to incorporate extended vacations into quarterly planning and OKR budgeting. You can build redundancy through a primary/secondary model, with strategic cross-training for team members. This approach ensures business continuity during time off and empowers team members to plan vacations confidently, knowing their responsibilities are covered, ultimately preventing burnout while maintaining productivity. – Sandeep Gundapaneni
2. Lead By Example With Early Vacation Planning
Culture at any company is a critical element that has a likelihood of changing when implemented from the top, cascading to the bottom. I strongly believe that I need to be “walking the talk” if I want my team to adopt a certain behavior. I make sure I book my vacation time well in advance and keep my team up to date on my time off. We are all now great planners who are prepared to divide and conquer. – Leena Waghmare, Gilead Sciences, Inc.
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3. Forecast Time Off To Avoid Disruptions
By forecasting time off in advance, we can identify potential coverage gaps and adjust workloads accordingly. It reduces last-minute disruptions and prevents burnout from overloading. It also helps with transparency, better workload balance and a more organized approach to summer scheduling. – Diganta Sengupta, Oracle Corp
4. Use A Shared ‘Vacation Heatmap’
We use a shared “vacation heatmap” where teammates log planned PTO early and coordinate coverage collaboratively. It highlights overlap risks, prompting the team—not just managers—to resolve conflicts and ensure handoffs. This builds ownership and keeps projects moving without top-down micromanagement. – Kumar Abhirup, Dench.com
5. Establish A Culture Of Accountability And Transparency
A strong team doesn’t need micromanaging. By summer, goals should ideally already be clear and responsibilities well-established. With cross-functional task rotation, knowledge-sharing and defined backups, work continues seamlessly. Tools like shared calendars or other PM tools certainly help, but success comes from a solid foundation built on transparency and accountability long before PTO begins. – Rahul Wankhede, Humana
6. Schedule Milestones Carefully And Communicate Openly
To help my team manage vacation scheduling and keep projects on track, I do two things: schedule key milestones outside the summer months (if possible) and simply talk with my team to keep everyone coordinated. Some companies also have a designated summer break where everyone is off at the same time. For me, open communication is what works best. – Chris Hewish, Xsolla
7. Work Together To Build A Shared Calendar
I ask each team member to submit their preferred summer time-off dates by early May, then we review them collectively to spot any overlaps or coverage gaps. Together, we build a shared calendar that clearly maps out responsibilities during absences. This creates accountability while giving everyone visibility into how we’ll keep projects moving smoothly through the summer. – Mark Vena, SmartTech Research
8. Focus On Capacity Management
We use an agile approach focused on capacity management, mapping dependencies to plan impacts across the organization. Executives factor in capacity and resources when prioritizing initiatives, and teams consider availability when committing to deliverables. This structure ensures timely project completion and engagement and prevents disruptions by aligning availability with project priorities for better resourcing. – Razat Gaurav, Planview
9. Encourage Team-Led Backup Planning
I implement a strategy of advanced planning and encourage the team to collaborate in balancing their vacations, ensuring that each member proposes backup coverage for their tasks while they are away. This approach helps maintain daily work and keep projects on track. – Ambika Saklani Bhardwaj, Walmart Inc.
10. Prioritize Cross-Training To Prevent Silos
I believe you must prioritize knowledge distribution. If a team is not adequately cross-trained and mentored, silos form, representing the work each team member is capable of and comfortable performing. If each team member is incapable of working outside of their silo, tasks get missed and projects go on hold until their expert returns. Knowledge distribution has to be a top priority for IT teams. – Robert Martin, Oil City Iron Works, Inc.
11. Incorporate Time Off Into Sprint Planning
I encourage the team to plan summer vacations early, during project or sprint planning. We use a shared calendar to track time off, allowing us to adjust workloads and ensure coverage through cross-training. This keeps work on track while supporting balance. – Sanjoy Sarkar, First Citizens Bank
12. Visualize PTO With A Shared Calendar Tool
We use a “vacation visualizer” tool—think of it as a shared calendar where everyone inputs their planned time off. This visual transparency empowers the team to see overlap early and adjust plans proactively, ensuring coverage without top-down micromanagement. This method has significantly streamlined our summer scheduling, keeping projects on track while respecting everyone’s need for downtime. – Dmitry Mishunin, HashEx
13. Adopt A First-Come, First-Served Policy
We’re a small company, and we have to stagger holidays so that we don’t have bottlenecks in daily work. In order to do this effectively, we’ve had to initiate a first-come, first-served approach. If you put in your vacation notice early, you secure the spot. By encouraging everyone to put their vacation requests in months in advance, we can spot problems from far away and mitigate them proactively. – Lewis Wynne-Jones, ThinkData Works
14. Offer Flexible, Asynchronous Work Options
A winning strategy is to adopt flexible core hours with asynchronous work options. Encouraging a summer-specific flexible schedule that allows employees to work asynchronously when needed will enable smoother transitions, as employees can complete critical tasks ahead of time or check in briefly without disrupting their time off. – Cristian Randieri, Intellisystem Technologies
15. Establish ‘Continuity Pods’
We establish “continuity pods” with rotating leads. Each pod includes key roles and shares ownership of project health, risks and decisions. It builds redundancy, prepares teams for absences and ensures business continuity without scrambling when people take time off. – Jitender Jain
16. Implement A Rotating ‘Coverage Buddy’ System
We introduced a rotating “coverage buddy” system that pairs each team member with a designated backup who can seamlessly handle their tasks. Before any vacation, buddies sync on project milestones, deadlines and potential blockers. This approach fosters accountability, promotes cross-training and ensures critical work never stalls. – Rohit Anabheri, Sakesh Solutions LLC
17. Treat Vacation Planning Like A Project
I ask the team to think about their summer plans like a mini project—set dates, flag dependencies and prep handoffs early. Treating time off with the same care as work helps everyone unplug without leaving gaps. This also helps me and my team with full transparency and planning. – Vishal Patel, Yahoo Inc.
18. Use An Interactive Dashboard For Clarity
I leverage an interactive scheduling dashboard that auto-aligns leave requests with project milestones and preassigned backup roles. This transparency empowers the team to proactively manage coverage and ensure seamless handoffs. It creates collective ownership, keeping projects on track even during summer absences. – Umesh Kumar Sharma
19. Apply The ‘3×3 Rule’
A successful strategy is implementing the “3×3 Rule”: 3 weeks’ notice, 3-step handover (status doc, sync call and check-in), and 3-day buffer overlap, if possible. This rule is lightweight but effective—it trains the team to self-organize their leave like pros, without micromanagement, and ensures projects stay on track while people fully unplug. – Jagadish Gokavarapu, Wissen Infotech
20. Create Vacation Runbooks For Smooth Handoffs
Each team member prepares a simple vacation runbook—with key context, contacts and current work—so others can step in smoothly. We treat documentation like a reusable playbook: It should be clear enough for anyone to follow, not just the person who wrote it. This builds true ownership and keeps momentum steady, even when people unplug. – Albert Lie, Forward Labs
