Capacity Management Maturity, Maslow, and You - Capacity Management Maturity vs. Maslow (6 of 7)

Continuing on from Wednesday with the scale, today we'll start with a look at Defined.

CMM – Defined/ Maslow – Love/Belonging

For a Capacity Management process to be effective, it has to be proactive, has to be organizational in nature, and has to really “fit in” with an IT organization and with the business.

I see a real similarity between CMMI and Maslow here – a person wants to belong to a family unit, to a community – the same manner as a Capacity Management team wants to feel like it belongs to an organization. Having worked in a dysfunctional organization where the Capacity Managers were to be avoided (for fear that IT wouldn’t get to buy the hardware it really wanted to buy, even though unnecessary), I quickly learned that this type of belonging or fitting in within an organization is quite important to the success of the process.


CMM – Managed/ Maslow – Esteem

Once again, I find concepts within Maslow that I can easily apply to a Capacity Management process that help in the evaluation.

Successful Capacity Managers feel valued in an organization.   They have a healthy amount of self-esteem and are made to feel valued by their managers and senior executives.

From the CMM perspective – a good process is one that can be quantitatively measured and managed.  The process can be evaluated in such a way that one can measure improvement or measure a process that’s no longer working the way it used to.

CMM – Optimized/ Maslow – Self-Actualization

In reality, I’ve not come across a Capacity Management process that was truly optimized.  One that’s truly optimized is one that is completely implemented, managed quantitatively, and the sole focus at this point is on continual process improvement.

The biggest danger I’ve found are the organizations who THINK they are at this level, but really aren’t. 

Likewise, self-actualization is incredibly hard to achieve in Maslow’s hierarchy – it requires that all the other needs, including esteem, are met and in my experience this is a goal for many people – and most of them know that they probably aren’t going to actually, completely achieve it.

So the takeaway?  It’s perfectly fine to have an organizational goal where Capacity Management reaches the top level.  It’s also OK if the organization doesn’t achieve that goal and recognizes that’s perfectly fine.

On Monday I'll discuss moving up the scale and summarize.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer