- There is a lack of understanding of the appropriate metrics to effectively manage capacity.
- There is a lack of analytical tools to start managing and planning capacity.
- Capacity management requires time and analytical skills.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- End users and stakeholders lack the ability to provide the correct information to identify current issues or future needs.
- Organizational demands change so quickly that it’s difficult to forecast resource requirements accurately.
- Start simple. Start with the monitoring data that is already gathered as part of normal routines.
- Build intuitive metrics. When using Excel and simple monitoring data, stick with metrics such as percent utilization.
- Know when to stop using Excel. If you need a Hadoop instance to handle the data, consider capacity management tools.
Impact and Result
- Create a service-oriented capacity management and planning strategy that will meet changing business needs.
- Adopt ITIL and COBIT frameworks to reduce the process and metric planning. Allow infrastructure managers to focus on developing the analytical skills and data gathering processes.
- Align the capacity management with critical IT services; focus on those resources that enable key services.
Workshop: Stop Just Managing Capacity by Moving to a Capacity-as-a-Service Strategy
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Introduction to Capacity Planning Concepts
The Purpose
- Provide a basic understanding of capacity planning as an IT skill.
- Identification of the relevant sections of COBIT and ITIL.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understanding of the role capacity planning plays in infrastructure tasks.
- Providing a scope for the capacity management and planning project.
Activities
Outputs
Define the role of capacity management in infrastructure day-to-day activities.
Define the relevant COBIT and ITIL modules.
- Understand the core concepts of ITIL and COBIT as they apply to capacity management.
Understand the difference and benefits of capacity management versus capacity planning.
- Define the positive improvements possible by adopting capacity planning best practices.
Module 2: Determine the Services that IT Provides
The Purpose
- Re-orientate infrastructure from a commodity view to a service view.
- Identify IT resources that IT provides to the business.
- Align the IT resources with IT services.
Key Benefits Achieved
- An understanding of resource usage based on business needs.
- A starting point for rationalizing IT resources with capacity management needs.
Activities
Outputs
Define critical IT services.
- Prioritized list of IT services.
Define the critical resources for those services.
- A list of resources associated with each IT service.
Relate services with business priorities.
Module 3: Relate Business Needs to Applications
The Purpose
- Separate high priority capacity management issues from application or vendor management issues.
- Prioritize those capacity issues that IT can manage and fix.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A starting point for capacity management.
- An understanding of the relationship between application and infrastructure pieces.
Activities
Outputs
Build a detailed description of each resource required for the top three IT services.
- A map of resource dependencies based on the IT services.
Map dependencies for each IT service.
- A set of KPIs based on measurements that IT is already using for day-to-day operations.
Define KPIs for capacity management.
- A prioritized list of infrastructure resources for capacity management.
Module 4: Design Potential Pools of Resources to Manage Capacity
The Purpose
- Build a plan for implementing the capacity management and planning plan.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Provide a starting point for measuring and understanding the organization’s capacity.
- Aligning capacity planning with ongoing infrastructure projects.
Activities
Outputs
Analyze historic utilization of resources to determine the peak and spare capacity.
- A project plan for communicating with IT and external stakeholders.
Design a long-term plan to reduce service interruptions.
- Identification of a shortlist of related projects that should be part of the capacity management plan.