The question every operator eventually asks is the same: “where is the work actually going?” Plans are easy; reality is where commitments, reallocations, and quiet drift turn a quarterly budget into something unrecognizable. Delphi’s Workforce tab includes a resource allocation view that maps that reality directly — who is funding what, where, and in what shape — on top of the same data the org graph uses.
Operational functions
An operational function in Delphi is a discrete, repeatable capability your organization performs — “Customer Onboarding,” “Infrastructure Operations,” “Claims Triage.” Each function has an owning team, optionally a named accountable person, and a list of value streams it serves. Functions consume named inputs from upstream functions and produce named outputs for downstream ones, so the work graph between them is explicit rather than implied.
This is the Delphi equivalent of the Program Object Model’s Program Element — the unit of account when you want to talk about “what the organization does” instead of “who the organization has.” Every operational function carries its own health indicators, risk statement, and status, so you can see at a glance which functions are degrading, which are stable, and which are planned or deprecated. Functions can nest: a top-level function like “Infrastructure Operations” might decompose into child functions for “Network,” “Storage,” and “Identity,” each with its own ownership and health.
Three-dimensional resource allocation
Resources in Delphi are allocated along three dimensions — the same shape used in defense and enterprise program management under the name Program Object Model, adapted for commercial operating models.
- WHO — the organizational unit providing the resource. Can be a specific person, a team, a department, or a cost center.
- WHAT FOR — the value stream consuming the resource. Value streams are the strategic objectives the organization is pursuing, and each value stream is what actually justifies the spend.
- WHAT TYPE — the resource category: full-time equivalents, contractors, raw hours, dollars, compute, or license seats. All six categories live in the same model so a Sankey can show time and money on the same canvas without conversion math.
Each allocation also carries an amount and unit (so “0.5 FTE” and “$24,000 USD/month” and “400 hours/week” can coexist), a period (weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual), an effective date, an optional expiration date, a confidence level (actual, estimated, or planned), and a source tag (HR system, finance system, manual entry, or inferred from other data). The confidence and source tags are what let you distinguish “this is what HR says the org looks like” from “this is what we penciled in during planning” from “this is what we inferred from calendar and git activity.”
Allocations can optionally pin to a specific operational function so you can see not just which value stream is being funded but which function within it is absorbing the resources.
Where the data comes from today
Out of the box, Delphi derives a baseline allocation from the org graph — communication-inferred time splits across teams and functions, marked as inferred. When you connect an HRIS like Workday or BambooHR, headcount and official org structure land with HR-system provenance and higher confidence. When you connect a finance system, dollar allocations land with finance-system provenance. Manual entries are supported for the gaps.
You don’t need all sources to get value. An inferred-only view is still useful — it’s often the first time anyone sees how the work actually distributes across value streams, which is usually not what the plan says.
Reading the Sankey
The Workforce tab renders the allocation model as a Sankey flowing from organizational units on the left, through value streams and operational functions in the middle, to resource categories on the right. Flow thickness reflects the allocation amount (normalized within each category so FTE and dollars are legible on the same view). Hover a flow to see the underlying allocation records with their source, confidence, and effective window. Click a node to filter the view to just that unit, value stream, or function.
The Sankey is a snapshot — it shows the view for the active time window on the dashboard’s context bar. Change the window and the flows recompute.
Asking Delphi about it
The fastest way to get an answer from the allocation model is chat. Try:
Which operational function is absorbing the most engineering FTE this quarter, and which value stream is it serving?
Show me the resource allocation for “Customer Onboarding” — who’s funding it, how much, and with what confidence.
What functions are labeled degrading this month, and how many FTE do they currently have allocated?
Delphi reads the operational function and allocation data directly, so the answers are grounded in the same data the Sankey renders — no parallel source of truth.