Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav –Where am I? (2 of 17)

Where am I?  Just click on your satnav.  But what if the signal is poor? Or you are in an area where there a few maps, road signs or postcodes?

Where am I in ITSM in general and Capacity Management in particular?  I guess I may need to do an audit – either myself or in conjunction with a consultant as a catalyst – or, if money is no object, I may as well outsource the complete assessment.

But what is the source and authority for my map?  What is the best practice?  Perhaps I will look at some reference books.  Check the IT Library.   Maybe try the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  Or maybe there are some standards, like ISO20000.

Then I find that capacity management is only about 50 pages scattered around ITIL V3 (it was 200 pages in a single ‘booklet’ in ITIL V1).  It tells me what to do, but not how to do it. 

ISO20000 only seems to provide a few checklists in a couple of pages telling me what the deliverables are but not what they contain.

I might try the ITSM Library and find a 200 page book all about capacity management, checklists and all.  But still it does not define what to do.  It is all a matter of adopt and adapt, take it or leave it, select as required to be fit for local purpose.

But you’ll be happy to know that there are some guidelines which can help develop the appropriate map for each site.

When an internal IT department applies service portfolio management it can seem like planners in the Soviet Union.  The 5-year plan was the central concept which brought stability and removed market fluctuations.  The planners calculated the need for products and then ordered the production.  For example a factory would receive an order for ladies shoes for five years production at full capacity. The problem with the planned economy was that it did not work; shops were full of shoes that nobody wanted.  The models were out-of-date and the quality shoddy due to lack of competition.

Sadly there is no external network of mapping/locating devices to identify automatically the current state of capacity management in your organisation.  It has to be done by analysis of current practice.  This is typically achieved by a ‘gap analysis’ done either internally, externally by a consultant or best, by a combination of these.

Many sites do an initial self-audit of their ITIL activities or get a consultant to do the same and maybe present the results using kiviat diagrams and the like to record the results of opinion surveys.  (This gives a scientific veneer to attitude responses given to specific and often badly coined questions).

I’ll cover the metrics required for effective capacity management on Monday…

Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer