Capacity Management Maturity, Assessing & Improving - 5 levels of process maturity (3 of 4)

As promised today I'll discuss the 5 levels of Capacity Management Maturity and what they mean.
They are:

Level 1 – Initial

Processes are undocumented and in a state of dynamic and chaotic manner. They tend to be driven in an ad hoc, uncontrolled, and reactive manner. Processes at this level tend to be unstable.

Level 2 – Repeatable

Some processes are repeatable, possibly with consistent results. Discipline is unlikely to be rigorous, but where it exists it may help to ensure existing processes are maintained during stressful periods.

Level 3 – Defined

Sets of defined and documented standard processes are established and subject to some degree of improvement over time.

Level 4 – Managed

Using process metrics, management can effectively control processes and identify ways to adjust and adapt the process to particular projects without losses of quality.

Level 5 – Optimized

The focus is on continual improvement through both incremental and innovative changes / improvements

Don't forget to register for our live webinar 'Capacity Management Maturity - Managed to Optimized' which covers how to get from Level 4 to Level 5 in your process. 

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

The final part of my series is on Tuesday, enjoy your weekend in the meantime.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer

Capacity Management Maturity - Assessing and Improving the Effectiveness (1 of 4)

Many organizations have a Capacity Management process or function in place, but no practical way to assess the effectiveness or even the strengths and weaknesses of the process or function.

This led to our development and refinement of a Capacity Management Maturity Assessment, consisting of 20 carefully chosen questions that help an organization assess maturity and effectiveness.

Our Capacity Management Maturity Survey is available to complete on line.

https://www.metron-athene.com/_capacity-management-maturity-survey/survey.asp

Once completed, the results will allow the Capacity Manager to better communicate the importance of Capacity Management and create a plan to fill identified gaps going forward.

Applying this assessment to multiple organizations allows comparisons to be made - between organizations and between an organization and others sharing characteristics such as type of business, geographical location and organizational size, among others.

This blog series will discuss the concept of Capacity Management Maturity, how the concept of maturity is defined and what are the building blocks that reflect a mature process or function within an organization.

Don't forget to register for the final part in our series of 'Capacity Management Maturity webinars  'Capacity Management Maturity - 'Managed to Optimized' '
https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

Rich Fronheiser
Chief Marketing Officer

Capacity Management Maturity Series – Managed to Optimized

The final part in our Capacity Management maturity series takes place on October 11 and explains what is expected from a fully mature capacity management process. 

If you have followed this series from the beginning, then you will have seen how the process has evolved from a chaotic/reactive process to a fully integrated business process providing proactive information to enable quicker and more accurate decision making to take place with associated benefits realised faster. If you haven't followed our series and would like to catch up on demand visit our Resources section to watch the previous 3 webinars 

https://www.metron-athene.com/resources/index.asp

In this webinar, we will cover what it means to be classed as Optimized. More specifically, how IT and Capacity Management can become strategic business partners and how collaboration between CM and the Business enables improvement over all business processes. From being graded as Initial or Repeatable to Defined, Managed or Optimized the overall focus switches from predominately component to service and then business and more specifically what are the potential impacts on revenues. It is at this, the Optimized level, that the embedded automation, process and data sharing integration, and capacity planning contributes most in mitigating service risk/impact and overall IT cost management.

Join us on October 11 to discover what it takes for your CM process to be fully optimized.

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

In the meantime if you'd like to find out where your organization is on the maturity scale then take our survey and get your free 20 page report.

www.metron-athene.com/survey/

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

       

Maturing your Capacity Management process - Summary ( 11/11)

As mentioned at the beginning of my blog series, the implementation of a mature business focused capacity process is a long term project that requires a good deal of effort.

In this series  I’ve given you a basic beginner’s guide,  something to present to the business to gauge the potential requirements and interest.

In summary and to provide some guiding principles for anyone looking to achieve a more mature implementation of capacity management, the following are the 5 key areas that should be the focus throughout your project:

·         Involve all aspects of the business as soon as possible.  Early involvement will pay dividends throughout the project with getting buy-in and building communication interfaces

·         Be selective with the technical information being captured and processed.  Across the enterprise there are likely to be hundreds (if not thousands) of metrics available, but it’s likely that only a small subset will be useful.  Remember the more data captured, the more likely you are to miss the important information.

·         Be sensible with the scope.  Start on a service that is important to the business, but isn’t so complex or sensitive that you won’t be able to make any progress.  Review the incident or change records to see if any of the services are suffering large numbers of capacity outages or late change requests for upgrades.

·         Aim for the quick wins where possible and strive to demonstrate value/progress as quickly as possible.

·         Be cautious with tooling.  Get the process configured and ensure that the needs are understood before starting any tooling evaluations.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the series and if you need expert guidance with maturing your capacity management process check out our Consulting Services.

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/consulting/capacity-management-consulting.html

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Demonstrate the value (10 of 11)

Sometimes getting started and maintaining capacity management can be a hard sell into an organization, especially where the common misconception is that just increasing the available capacity is cheap. 

There are a number of methods that can be used to demonstrate the progress being made and the value to the business:

·         Ensure all presentations and reports contain the right level of data.  Whether it’s for the business or a technical department, ensure that it’s written in a way that means something to them

·         In the initial audit or implementation phase there will be objectives set by the business about what they want to see from the capacity process.  Ensure these are understood and at least some of the KPIs are built around those objectives.

·         Carefully monitor incidents and problems, ensure all capacity related tickets are captured and ultimately reduced over time.

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is a “reasonably new” concept within ITIL, but capacity management has had an iterative cycle of “Monitor – Analyze – Tune – Change” since at least version 2.  This cycle of improvement is critical in optimizing the IT environment and is one of the key parts of the process for creating value. 

By optimizing the environment the process can demonstrate the following:

o   Release of spare capacity

o   Deferred or optimized expenditure

o   Ensure service level targets are met, whilst reducing costs

On Wednesday I’ll summarize in the final part of my blog series.

If you missed part 3 of our Capacity Management Maturity series - Defined to Managed you can catch it on demand  in our Resources section. 

https://www.metron-athene.com/resources/index.asp

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Keeping the momentum going ( 9 of 11 )

As with any implementation, once the initial project has been concluded, all the initial objectives have been met and the quick wins achieved, the difficulty is maintaining the momentum.

Having this momentum is essential for business capacity management and the following techniques are very effective:

Intranet/Newsletters

Most organizations have an Intranet or similar that is used to send out information.  Where possible, try to get capacity staff mentioned or get capacity management successes published.  These can be in the form of selling the benefits and ensuring people are aware of the process and the value it provides.  Where possible, mention successes, achieving targets, reducing expenditure etc.  In short, promote and sell the work being done.

Road shows

An extension of the Intranet option, if there is the time and opportunity, mini presentations on capacity management to key stakeholders, different departments  and locations can be an excellent source of information.

These also serve to raise the profile of capacity management and ensure people are aware of what’s happening.  These can be done on their own or perhaps as part of a wider Service Management initiative.

The content would normally be at a high level (not too many graphs) and focus on the following:

·         Progress so far

·         Successes and failures

·         What’s next and how people can get involved

All of this momentum will help you to demonstrate value and that’s what I’ll be discussing on Monday. 

Check out our on-demand Capacity Management Maturity workshop  

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/online-workshops/capacity-management-workshops.html

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Summary ( 11/11)

As mentioned at the beginning of my blog series, the implementation of a mature business focused capacity process is a long term project that requires a good deal of effort.

In this series  I’ve given you a basic beginner’s guide,  something to present to the business to gauge the potential requirements and interest.

In summary and to provide some guiding principles for anyone looking to achieve a more mature implementation of capacity management, the following are the 5 key areas that should be the focus throughout your project:

·         Involve all aspects of the business as soon as possible.  Early involvement will pay dividends throughout the project with getting buy-in and building communication interfaces

·         Be selective with the technical information being captured and processed.  Across the enterprise there are likely to be hundreds (if not thousands) of metrics available, but it’s likely that only a small subset will be useful.  Remember the more data captured, the more likely you are to miss the important information.

·         Be sensible with the scope.  Start on a service that is important to the business, but isn’t so complex or sensitive that you won’t be able to make any progress.  Review the incident or change records to see if any of the services are suffering large numbers of capacity outages or late change requests for upgrades.

·         Aim for the quick wins where possible and strive to demonstrate value/progress as quickly as possible.

·         Be cautious with tooling.  Get the process configured and ensure that the needs are understood before starting any tooling evaluations.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the series and if you need expert guidance with maturing your capacity management process check out our Consulting Services  https://www.metron-athene.com/services/index.html 

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Demonstrate value (10 of 11)

Sometimes getting started and maintaining capacity management can be a hard sell into an organization, especially where the common misconception is that just increasing the available capacity is cheap. 

There are a number of methods that can be used to demonstrate the progress being made and the value to the business:

·         Ensure all presentations and reports contain the right level of data.  Whether it’s for the business or a technical department, ensure that it’s written in a way that means something to them

·         In the initial audit or implementation phase there will be objectives set by the business about what they want to see from the capacity process.  Ensure these are understood and at least some of the KPIs are built around those objectives.

·         Carefully monitor incidents and problems, ensure all capacity related tickets are captured and ultimately reduced over time.

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is a “reasonably new” concept within ITIL, but capacity management has had an iterative cycle of “Monitor – Analyse – Tune – Change” since at least version 2.  This cycle of improvement is critical in optimizing the IT environment and is one of the key parts of the process for creating value. 

By optimizing the environment the process can demonstrate the following:

o   Release of spare capacity

o   Deferred or optimized expenditure

o   Ensure service level targets are met, whilst reducing costs

On Friday I’ll summarize in the final part of my blog series. Remember to sign up to our Community and gain access to some great white papers on Capacity Management 

https://www.metron-athene.com/resources/login.asp

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Keeping the momentum going ( 9 of 11 )

As with any implementation, once the initial project has been concluded, all the initial objectives have been met and the quick wins achieved, the difficulty is maintaining the momentum.

Having this momentum is essential for business capacity management and the following techniques are very effective:

Intranet/Newsletters

Most organizations have an Intranet or similar that is used to send out information.  Where possible, try to get capacity staff mentioned or get capacity management successes published.  These can be in the form of selling the benefits and ensuring people are aware of the process and the value it provides.  Where possible, mention successes, achieving targets, reducing expenditure etc.  In short, promote and sell the work being done.

Road shows

An extension of the Intranet option, if there is the time and opportunity, mini presentations on capacity management to key stakeholders, different departments  and locations can be an excellent source of information.

These also serve to raise the profile of capacity management and ensure people are aware of what’s happening.  These can be done on their own or perhaps as part of a wider Service Management initiative.

The content would normally be at a high level (not too many graphs) and focus on the following:

·         Progress so far

·         Successes and failures

·         What’s next and how people can get involved

All of this momentum will help you to demonstrate value and that’s what I’ll be discussing on Wednesday. 

Check out our on-demand VMware and Hyper-V capacity management workshops 

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/online-workshops/capacity-management-workshops.html

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Maturing your Capacity Management processes ( 1 of 11)

Mature capacity management whilst difficult to achieve can provide enormous value to an organization.

Regardless of the technology; the methods and techniques employed in capacity management are essential in optimizing the IT expenditure, reducing the risk associated with IT change and ultimately ensuring that the IT resource meets the needs of the business.

One of the biggest challenges in implementing a new capacity management process or maturing an existing process is aligning with the business.  This alignment ultimately provides the key information required to understand “the capacity” of an enterprise and plan accordingly. 

This is an essential step in implementing and providing mature capacity management, but the majority of organizations have yet to achieve this and are still very much focused at the component level of capacity management. 

This is true across all market sectors with these organizations exhibiting the following common traits:

·         Business view IT capacity as infinite

·         Lots of data available, but not used to its full potential

·         Capacity management has a reactive focus

·         Planning purely based on historical data

·         Any capacity management is happening in technical silo’s

In this blog series I’ll aim to address some of the challenges faced when implementing business level capacity.

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Capacity Management Maturity Webinar Series – Initial to Repeatable

We start our webinar series on April 12 by taking a look at the lowest level of CMMI process maturity, Initial. Where do you start when attempting to address how mature a process within your organization? Can you: Clearly identify whether a Capacity Management process exists? Derive and demonstrate understandable output from it? Illustrate how the process works through supporting documentation? Demonstrate control of the inputs to the process? Guarantee you’re not losing time through a variable and undefined approach? If you answer no or maybe to most of these, then it's possible that your Capacity Management process is at the Initial maturity level. Moving up to the Repeatable level will benefit you and your business by delivering relevant capacity management information in a consistent manner. Join us on the start of this process maturity series as we take a deep-dive into practical steps you can take that will enhance your current activities to ensure that core capacity management information is delivered every time – the Repeatable level of the Capacity Management Maturity model. Register for your place on our webinar now https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html Charles Johnson Principal Consultant

Capacity Management Maturity, Assessing & Improving - 5 levels of process maturity (3 of 4)

As promised today I'll discuss the 5 levels of Capacity Management Maturity.

They are:

Level 1 – Initial

Processes are undocumented and in a state of dynamic and chaotic manner. They tend to be driven in an ad hoc, uncontrolled, and reactive manner. Processes at this level tend to be unstable.

Level 2 – Repeatable

Some processes are repeatable, possibly with consistent results. Discipline is unlikely to be rigorous, but where it exists it may help to ensure existing processes are maintained during stressful periods.

Level 3 – Defined

Sets of defined and documented standard processes are established and subject to some degree of improvement over time.

Level 4 – Managed

Using process metrics, management can effectively control processes and identify ways to adjust and adapt the process to particular projects without losses of quality.

Level 5 – Optimizing

The focus is on continual improvement through both incremental and innovative changes / improvements

Don't forget our webinar today' Maturing the Capacity Management Process' 

http://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/index.html

The final part of my series will be on Friday.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer

Capacity Management Maturity - Assessing and Improving the Effectiveness (1 of 4)

Many organizations have a Capacity Management process or function in place, but no practical way to assess the effectiveness or even the strengths and weaknesses of the process or function.

This led to the development and refinement of a Capacity Management Maturity Survey, consisting of 20 carefully chosen questions that help an organization assess maturity and effectiveness.

Our Capacity Management Maturity Survey is available to complete on line. http://www.metron-athene.com/_capacity-management-maturity-survey/survey.asp

Once completed, the results will allow the Capacity Manager to better communicate the importance of Capacity Management and create a plan to fill identified gaps going forward.

Applying this assessment to multiple organizations allows comparisons to be made - between organizations and between an organization and others sharing characteristics such as type of business, geographical location and organizational size, among others.

We're also running a webinar on March 16 'Maturing the Capacity Management Process'
You can register for your place now
http://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/index.html

Rich Fronheiser
Chief Marketing Officer

Capacity Management Maturity - Assessing and Improving the Effectiveness (1 of 4)

Many organizations have a Capacity Management process or function in place, but no practical way to assess the effectiveness or even the strengths and weaknesses of the process or function.

This led to our development and refinement of a Capacity Management Maturity Assessment, consisting of 20 carefully chosen questions that help an organization assess maturity and effectiveness.

Once completed, the results will allow the Capacity Manager to better communicate the importance of Capacity Management and also create a plan to fill identified gaps going forward.

     Applying this assessment to multiple organizations allows comparisons to be made

between organizations and between an organization and others sharing characteristics such as type of business, geographical location, organizational size, among others.

This blog series will discuss the concept of Capacity Management Maturity, how the concept of maturity is defined and what are the building blocks that reflect a mature process or function within an organization.

Don't forget to register for my webinar on Wednesday Jan 20 'Capacity Management Maturity - Assessing and Improving the Effectiveness'

http://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/index.html

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer