Capacity Management in a Can - (Open, Heat, Serve, and Succeed) 1 of 10

My first position out of graduate school was as a Unix Capacity Planner.  Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in varied industries, including an electric utility, an overnight shipping company, and an insurance company.  Each presented significant challenges, technical and otherwise, but all of those companies had reasonably mature Capacity Management processes.

As I moved into consulting and also spent time working for a software vendor, I found out rather quickly that process maturity is NOT the norm.  Most companies I dealt with, and deal with, do not have a mature Capacity Management process.  Many do not have basic tools in place to do effective Component Capacity Management.

If you, like me, have been around the work world for a period of time, it’s almost certain you’ve been through at least one of these events. 

•          Layoffs

•          Reorganization / New Management

•          Mergers

      •          Acquisitions

Many of us have been through more than one and some of us have been through all of them.

They all have one thing in common – a lot of uncertainty. 

First off, most people from senior management down wonder if their positions will be eliminated.  While this is obvious, what’s less obvious is how such uncertainty will affect how people work and how new initiatives (such as a new Capacity Management process or the acquisition of tools) will be received.  It’s quite possible in a merger and acquisition scenario that funding for upcoming or existing projects will be frozen while management figure out the direction the “new” or changed company will take.

Having been through a few mergers and acquisitions, it’s clear to me that they are rarely a combination of equals, especially in the area of IT.

The direction of IT is usually set by the remaining management and those who came onboard from the “other” company have to figure out how to stay relevant in the new company. 

Two mature companies (in the area of IT) means that each has its own ideas of what “best practices” actually are.  IT Service Management processes are probably in place in each of the companies and it’s likely that the resulting teams will not simply be a combination of the existing teams.

Technology, tools, applications, services – there will be a lot of redundancy and overlap in all of these areas and decisions will need to be made on which of these will survive the merger/acquisition

Follow my series where I’ll be looking at setting up good capacity management processes,  where ITIL fits in to the process and what challenges Capacity Managers face during mergers and acquisitions,.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer