Capacity Management Maturity, Maslow, and You - Moving up the scales (7 of 7)

When evaluating your Capacity Management Maturity, it’s useful to consider both the CMM/CMMI scale and Maslow and the concepts Maslow brings to his Hierarchy of Needs.

•        CMM – can’t be proactive until all “reactive components” are in place, etc.

•        Maslow – can’t look to fulfill higher level needs until the lower level ones are completely satisfied

•        Combine the two: Design the process one level at a time and complete a GAP Analysis to determine how you can “complete” each level – and then move to the next one

When trying to move from one level to the next – it’s important to make sure that you’ve completely satisfied the requirements of that level before moving on.

For example – you would like to move to the Defined level, which makes the Capacity Management process more proactive.  But how can you do that if you don’t satisfy everything in the lower level – having data available for all of the components that you’re working with, for example.

When starting from scratch, it’s easy to determine the items that you feel you need to create a mature process.  Most organizations, however, have parts of a Capacity Management process already in place, and deciding to ignore those parts and start from scratch likely will cause your progress to slow, if not halt entirely.

Organizations are people

It’s unwise to try to ignore the needs of the people you work with when trying to implement or improve your CM process:

•        Consider the effect on others and how others can affect your efforts

•        Find people who will support your efforts – how can you help fulfil their needs?

Conclusion

It’s useful to evaluate processes and people using various models and/or hierarchies:

•        There are similarities between process maturity models and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

•        Processes ultimately are implemented (and helped/hindered by people), so it’s important to consider others’ needs and wants

•        A mature Capacity Management process consists of solid processes but also an organization that supports and sees the value in the process

If you'd like to find out where you sit on the Capacity Management Maturity Scale then

take our survey and receive your free 20 page report

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

Rich Fronheiser

Chief marketing Officer

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

Capacity Management Maturity, Maslow, and You - Capacity Management Maturity vs. Maslow(5 of 7)

Capacity Management Maturity vs. Maslow

CMM – Initial/ Maslow – Physiological

An organization can’t even think about being reactive if basic needs aren’t being met.

No processes, chaotic.  No capturing or measurement of data. 

No governance.   No funding.

Barely breathing, let alone thriving.

As I mentioned earlier, few organizations are in this category.

However, it is instructive to think about the Maslow equivalent – a person who doesn’t have air to breathe, water to drink, or food to eat isn’t going to worry much about the higher level needs.  Likewise, organizations who live ‘day to day’ in a chaotic fashion likely don’t have the time, money, or people to build a Capacity Management process.

It’s also obvious in both models that getting to the next stage means that this lowest, most basic stage needs to be addressed and met first.

CMM – Repeatable/ Maslow – Safety

Many people have homes, have enough to eat, have all basic needs met, but little more.

Many organizations have project level, reactive processes in place, but nothing proactive or organization-level.

A lot of organizations that think they’re doing an OK job with Capacity Management still look more at individual projects and aren’t being strategic on an organizational level.

Note that within the CMMI, Capacity Management is considered a Management Level 3 process – one could easily argue that if there isn’t a proactive aspect of Capacity Management, you really aren’t doing Capacity Management.

But without mastery of the Repeatable tasks (like capturing and storing data), you’ll never reach the Defined level.

I'll be looking at the Defined and remaining levels on Friday.

In the meantime don't forget to find out where your organization is on the Capacity Management Maturity Scale by completing our survey to receive your free 20 page report  www.metron-athene.com/survey/

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer

Many organizations fall into this level.  Not completely chaotic, but very reactive.

Capacity Management Maturity, Maslow, and You - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (4 of 7)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory of psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943.
Maslow broke different human needs into 5 levels and represented them graphically on a pyramid.

The most basic needs are the physiological - requirements for human survival.  These include air, water, food, clothing, and shelter.

Moving up the pyramid, we reach the safety needs.  These can include both physical and emotional security needs such as personal security, financial security, health and well-being, and a safety net against accidents and illnesses.

Once these needs are met, the third level of human needs is interpersonal and involves feelings of belongingness.  This can include friendship, intimacy, and family.

Esteem – all humans have a need to feel respected and this includes the need to have self-esteem and self-respect.

Self-actualization – the need to be “all one can be” in whatever area is important to the person.  Maslow argued that in order to understand this level of need, all other levels must be mastered.

While one could wonder how this relates to Capacity Management, we’ll see there’s an interesting parallel as we dive into how Maslow and CMMI relate on Wednesday.

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer