Work assignment of redundant personnel.
Resource allocation for generating unsubstantiated billable hours.
Any work that goes into making anything possible.
The term originated when a former McKinsey/KPMG/Accenture/PWC senior executive lead consultant had delivered a new project operating model, but had unintentionally omitted (forgotten) to take into account pre-project initialisation efforts; ideation, conceptualisation, business analysis, specify requirements, business case development, strategic alignment, create enterprise and solution architecture, scoping, get pre-approval, stakeholder mapping, communication and management, qualification and regulatory assessment, design, test and success criteria development, personnel training, estimations, and resource planning - just to mention some.
When being challenged on this transgression, the response was "soft booking".
Later, a decision point (DP) zero was introduced. Then pre-DP-zero, then pre-pre-DP-zero, before eventually the project operation model was replaced by a new operating model; effectively shifting all decision points four steps back and re-counting from DP1.
DP1 is approval of estimations (budgeting/forecasting) and for soft booking of personnel.
Pyramid of Soft Booking
Top (Pink) Layer: Unsubstantiated Billable Hours
Log hours without clear task evidence
Second (Coral) Layer: Redundant Personnel Assignment
Assign multiple people to a task that one could handle
Third (Green) Layer: Unconfirmed Resource Allocation
Commit resources without complete details
Bottom (Teal) Layer: Making Anything Possible
Lay groundwork without specifics
This pyramid represents different layers of the process, with the base being more foundational and general, and the top being more specific to the idea of soft booking.