Capacity management is a process used to manage information technology (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT resources are right-sized to meet current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. Capacity Management considers all resources required by custom software development companies to deliver the IT service, and plans for short, medium and long term business requirements.
- Business Capacity Management:
- To translate business needs and plans into capacity and performance requirements for services and IT infrastructure.
- To ensure that future capacity and performance needs can be fulfilled.
- Service Capacity Management:
- To manage, control and predict the performance and capacity of operational services.
- This includes initiating proactive and reactive action to ensure that the performances and capacities of services meet their agreed targets.
- Component Capacity Management:
- To manage, control and predict the performance, utilization and capacity of IT resources and individual IT components.
- Capacity Management Reporting:
- To provide other Service Management processes and IT Management with information related to service and resource capacity, utilization and performance.
Capacity Plan:
Capacity plan is used to manage the resources required to deliver IT services. It contains scenarios for different predictions of business demand, and options with cost estimates to deliver agreed service level targets.
- Business scenarios:
- Known business initiatives
- Known business volume forecasts
- Forecast of service utilization and performance
- Forecast of resource utilization and performance
- Other potential impacts on service capacity and performance
- Initiatives to adjust service capacity and performance
Key Performance Indicators:
Here following are key performance indicators that help measuring effectiveness of capacity management in various software development companies:
- Incidents due to Capacity Shortages:
- Number of incidents occurring because of insufficient service or component capacity
- Exactness of Capacity Forecast:
- Deviation of the predicted capacity development from actual course
- Capacity Adjustments:
- Number of adjustments to service and component capacities due to changing demand
- Unplanned Capacity Adjustments:
Number of unplanned increases to service or component capacity as result of capacity bottlenecks
- Resolution Time of Capacity Shortage:
- Resolution time for identified capacity bottlenecks
- Capacity Reserves:
- Percentage of capacity reserves at times of normal and maximum demand
- Percentage of Capacity Monitoring:
- Percentage of services and infrastructure components under capacity monitoring
Capacity Report:
The Capacity Report provides other Service Management processes and IT Management with information related to service and resource utilization and performance in software development companies. It is a preliminary document to the Service Level Report:
- For all IT services
- Incidents leading to reduced Service capacities or performance
- Analysis of the effects upon IT capacities
- Running and planned measures for the increase of Service capacities or performance
Benefits of Capacity Management:
- The performance of IT resources is optimized.
- The necessary capacity is available when it is needed, avoiding a negative impact on quality of service.
- Unnecessary expenses caused by "last minute" purchases are avoided.
- Growth of the infrastructure is planned, allowing it to be matched to real business needs.
- The cost of maintenance and administration associated with obsolete or unnecessary hardware and applications are reduced.
- Possible incompatibilities and faults in the IT infrastructure are reduced.
Challenges of Capacity Management:
- Insufficient information for realistic capacity planning.
- Unrealistic expectations about the cost savings and improvements in performance.
- Inadequate resources to monitor performance properly.
- Distributed and excessively complex IT infrastructure making access to data difficult.
- There is insufficient commitment on the part of top management to implement the associated processes rigorously.
- Rapid technological change makes it necessary to continuously review the plans and scenarios envisaged.
Successful capacity management requires a thorough understanding of how business demand influences demand for services, and how service demand influences demand on components. Capacity management also serves as a focal point for any capacity issues in IT Service Management in different software development companies.
