Staring at your screen waiting for a Valentine’s e-card from that someone special – or your manager, today? Never fear. Here at Metron we love capacity managers, and if you want to receive our regular love letters let us know at sales@metron-athene.com ♥
Too often the Capacity Manager feels unloved and ignored. You spend your time producing reports and charts that never get seen. This is not great for your company, or for your job satisfaction and continued employment prospects! How do you get that special one to see you and love you? If you can, then a good Capacity Manager will save the company money. The major reason we see for Capacity Managers being the wallflower at the IT party is reports produced full of technical explanations but light on business focus. This leads to reports lacking impact with their target audience, and over time nobody knowing who the Capacity Manager is and just how much value they can provide.
So what can the Capacity Manager do to find corporate love and appreciation?
1.Write a Capacity Management business plan. Show how you and Capacity Management will save the company money and avoid crises over the next 2 or 3 years. Business brains are focussed on their revenue streams, so get the business figures and relate your capacity issues to those. Consider what it will cost the business if there is a “go slow” in service quality due to capacity issues and how this will affect the flow of money into the business.
You might have been ignored because the business has a lot of excess capacity. Consider how much the excess is costing the business, and present how you’re going to identify and use that excess capacity, saving potential future expenditure.
If you are running a home grown Capacity Planning and Management solution consider how much it’s costing the business to maintain. All too often we see Capacity Managers spending the majority of their time maintaining a solution rather than performing delivering value through capacity information to the business.
There are loads of business plan templates on the internet. They will not all fit perfectly to our situation here, but they are fairly easy to adjust to suit your needs (you may for instance want to throw away the marketing section!).
2.Here’s a tricky one. Dress smart. We know everyone should be appreciated for what they are, but impressions count. Make sure you’re physically and mentally spruced up and looking your best - you’re going to need it for the next step.
3.Find a Sponsor. Once you have a business plan with a business benefit, work out who’s going to be most receptive to your message and can influence others, then grab some time with them. Ambush them at the coffee machine, pounce on them at their desk and fix a meeting. Do it face to face. Another e-mail from “that Capacity Manager” can be deleted. An interesting business plan from this thought provoking and well presented ideas machine is harder to ignore.
4.Keep regular reports that you are producing business focussed. Really. People sitting around the board room table sipping lattes and pondering their stock portfolio care significantly less about CPU MHz, and disk occupancy than they do about £££ and $$$ or €€€. So start with the cash and provide the technical reasoning later on or in a separate report.
5. Don’t be afraid to raise support desk tickets based on capacity trend alerts (when you are happy with your trending and alerting solution). Automate it if you can. Don’t just rely on people reading your reports and taking action. Start firing the problems you identify at your service desk. Get your sponsor on board first mind you, so if people complain about the tickets you raise you’ve got some support. It all helps people understand that capacity is a day to day issue that saves money and supports the business achieve its goals.
You might have been ignored because the business has a lot of excess capacity. Consider how much the excess is costing the business, and present how you’re going to identify and use that excess capacity, saving potential future expenditure.
If you are running a home grown Capacity Planning and Management solution consider how much it’s costing the business to maintain. All too often we see Capacity Managers spending the majority of their time maintaining a solution rather than performing delivering value through capacity information to the business.
There are loads of business plan templates on the internet. They will not all fit perfectly to our situation here, but they are fairly easy to adjust to suit your needs (you may for instance want to throw away the marketing section!).
2.Here’s a tricky one. Dress smart. We know everyone should be appreciated for what they are, but impressions count. Make sure you’re physically and mentally spruced up and looking your best - you’re going to need it for the next step.
3.Find a Sponsor. Once you have a business plan with a business benefit, work out who’s going to be most receptive to your message and can influence others, then grab some time with them. Ambush them at the coffee machine, pounce on them at their desk and fix a meeting. Do it face to face. Another e-mail from “that Capacity Manager” can be deleted. An interesting business plan from this thought provoking and well presented ideas machine is harder to ignore.
4.Keep regular reports that you are producing business focussed. Really. People sitting around the board room table sipping lattes and pondering their stock portfolio care significantly less about CPU MHz, and disk occupancy than they do about £££ and $$$ or €€€. So start with the cash and provide the technical reasoning later on or in a separate report.
5. Don’t be afraid to raise support desk tickets based on capacity trend alerts (when you are happy with your trending and alerting solution). Automate it if you can. Don’t just rely on people reading your reports and taking action. Start firing the problems you identify at your service desk. Get your sponsor on board first mind you, so if people complain about the tickets you raise you’ve got some support. It all helps people understand that capacity is a day to day issue that saves money and supports the business achieve its goals.
So, you look good, you have good support around you, you’re talking the language of love that the business wants to hear. Who knows, you might just get that Valentine’s card next year.
Phil Bell
Consultant
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