Capacity Management Handbook:

Monitor, Analyze, Tune, Manage Demand and Plan Your

Organization's IT Capacity Demands Best Practices Handbook
- Ready to use bringing Theory into Action

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION ROADMAP ................................................................................................... 5

2 CAPACITY MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................................... 9

3 SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS ................................................................................................ 39

3.1 OBJECTIVES AND GOALS........................................................................................................... 41

3.2 TYPICAL CONTENTS OF A RECOVERY PLAN ............................................................................ 45
3.3 POLICIES, OBJECTIVES & SCOPE ............................................................................................. 49
3.4 BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION DOCUMENT ..................................................................................... 53
3.5 BUSINESS AND IT SERVICE MAPPING ....................................................................................... 59
3.6 ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES...................................................................................................... 75
3.7 REPORTS, KPIS AND OTHER METRICS ..................................................................................... 77
3.8 COMMUNICATION PLAN.............................................................................................................. 83
3.9 CAPACITY MANAGEMENT PROCESS MANAGER ....................................................................... 89

4 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN – PROJECT PLAN................................................................... 93

5 FURTHER INFORMATION ................................................................................................... 103

3
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IT Service Management with Availability Management, Capacity
Management and Disaster Recovery, IT Service Continuity Management

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 Capacity Management Workbook

1 INTRODUCTION ROADMAP

Many organizations are looking to implement a Capacity Management as a way to

improve the structure and quality of the business. This document describes the
contents of the Capacity Management Workbook. The information found within the
book is based on the ITIL Version 3 framework, specifically the Service Design
phase which incorporates the updated ITIL version 3 Capacity Management process.

The Workbook is designed to answer a lot of the questions that Capacity

Management process raises and provides you with useful guides and templates.

The supporting documents will help you identify the areas within your organization
that require the most activity in terms of change and improvement.

Presentations can be used to educate or be used as the basis for management

presentations or when making business cases for Capacity Management
implementation.

The additional information and bonus resources will enable you to improve your
organizations methodology knowledge base.

The Workbook serves to act as a starting point. It will give you a clear path to travel.
It is designed to be a valuable source of information and activities.

The Capacity Management Workbook:

Flows logically,

Is scalable,

Provides presentations, templates and documents,

Saves you time.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Step 1

Start by reviewing the PowerPoint presentation:

• Capacity Management

This presentation provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of Capacity

Management in the specialist areas of ITIL Version3. It will give you a good
knowledge and understanding of all the terms, activities and concepts required within
the Capacity Management process. It can also be used as the basis for management
presentations or when making a formal business case for Capacity Management
implementation. Make sure you pay close attention to the notes pages, as well as
the slides, as references to further documents and resources are highlighted here.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Step 2

If you did not look at the supporting documents and resources when prompted during
the PowerPoint presentation, do this now.

Below is an itemized list of the supporting documents and resources for easy
reference. You can use these documents and resources within your own
organization or as a template to help you in prepare your own bespoke
documentation.

• ITIL V3 Capacity Management Presentation

• Objectives and Goals
• Typical Contents of a Capacity Plan
• Policies, Objectives and Scope
• Business Justification Document
• Business and IT Service Mapping
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Reports, KPIs and other Metrics
• Communication Plan
• Capacity Management Process Manager

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Step 3

Alternatively, continue by working through the Capacity Management

Implementation & Project Plan with the focus on your organization. This will help
you ascertain the Capacity Management maturity for your organization. You will able
to identify gaps and areas of attention and/or improvement.

The supporting documents and bonus resources found within the book will help you
fill these gaps by giving you a focused, practical and user-friendly approach to
Capacity Management.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

2 CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

Capacity Management is a process that extends across the Service Lifecycle. A key
success factor in managing capacity is ensuring it is considered during the design
stage.

An Objectives and Goals document can be found on page 41.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Essentially it is a balancing act of cost against capacity, (ensuring cost effective

purchases for business capacity needs).

The scope of Capacity Management encompasses operational and

development environments including ALL:

• Hardware
• Software
• Peripherals
• Scheduling of HR, Staffing level, skill levels and capability levels are included
in scope of Capacity Management.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

The purpose of Capacity Management is to provide a point of focus and

management for all capacity and performance related issues, relating to both
services and resources.

Typical Contents of a Capacity Plan can be found on page 45.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management should also consider space planning and environmental

system capacity as well as certain aspects of human resources, but only where a
lack of human resources could result in a breach of SLA and OLA targets, a delay in
the end-to-end performance or service response time, or an inability to meet future
commitments and plans.

There is a Policies, Objectives and Scope document available on page 49.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

In conjunction with the business and their plans, Capacity Management provides a
Capacity Plan that outline the IT resources and funding needed to support the
business plan, together with a cost justification of that expenditure.

For more information on value, there is a Business Justification Document

available on page 53.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management is essentially a balancing act:

• Balancing cost against resources needed: the need to ensure that processing
capacity that is purchased is cost-justifiable in terms of business need, and
the need to make the most efficient use of those resources.
• Balancing supply against demand: the need to ensure that the available
supply of IT processing power matches the demands made on it by the
business, both now and in the future. It may also be necessary to manage or
influence the demand for a particular resource.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management has 3 sub-processes:

Business Capacity Management:

• Manage Capacity to meet future business requirements for IT
• services
• Plan and implement sufficient capacity in an appropriate timescale
• Should be included in Change Management and Project management
• activities

Service Capacity Management

• Focus on managing ongoing service performance as
• detailed in SLA or SLR
• Establish baselines and profiles of use of Services

Component Capacity Management

• Identify and manage each of the components of the IT Infrastructure
• E.g. CPU, memory, disks, network bandwidth
• Evaluates NEW technology
• Load balances across resources
• All 3 components collate their data and report to SLM.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

continued…

More information on Business and IT Service Mapping can be found on page

59.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management Information System: a virtual repository of all Capacity

Management data, usually stored in multiple physical locations, holds business,
service, technical, financial, and utilisation data. Used for reports, forecasts etc.

Capacity Planning: Analysing the current situation and predicting the future use of
the IT infrastructure and resources needed to meet the expected demand for IT
Services.

Forecast & Predictive Reports: These will be used by all areas to analyse, predict
and forecast particular business and IT scenarios and their potential IT solutions.

Performance Monitoring: Measuring, monitoring, and tuning the performance of IT

Infrastructure components.

Exception Reports: Reports that show management and technical staff when the
capacity and performance of a particular component or service becomes
unacceptable are also a required form of analysis of capacity data.

Tuning: Identify areas of IT infrastructure that could be better utilized

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 Capacity Management Workbook

continued…

Baselining: First stage of Modelling is to create a baseline model that reflects

accurately the performance that is being achieved. This can then be used at a later
point for an accurate comparison.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

This graph represents the consequences of reactive behavior in managing capacity.

Diagonal solid line represents the typical capacity needs of an organization over
time.

The dotted line represents the Ideal management of capacity to meet the
organization’s needs.

The Horizontal lines depicts the reactive approach, whereby $$ are put into resolving
capacity issues, only when it becomes an issue. This goes well until the next major
incident, and more reactive $$ are injected to try and “fix” the capacity issues, rather
than addressing the issue in a proactive manner.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management consists of 7 main activities.

• Performance Monitoring - Measuring, monitoring, and tuning the

performance of IT Infrastructure components.
• Demand Management - Aims to influence the demand on capacity. It is about
moving demand. Capacity Management has a close relationship with the SS
phase, especially with Demand Management.
• Application Sizing - Determining the hardware or network capacity to
support new or modified applications and the predicted workload
• Modeling - Used to forecast the behaviour of the infrastructure.
• Storage of Capacity Management Data
• Capacity Planning
• Reporting

More information on Roles and Responsibilities can be found on page 75.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Typical monitored date would include:

• Processor utilization
• Memory utilization
• % processor per transaction type
• I O rates
• Queue lengths
• Disk utilization
• Transaction rates
• Response times
• Database usage
• Index usage
• Hit rates
• Concurrent user numbers
• Network traffic rates.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

In some cases, a combination of a number of systems may be used. The monitoring

of response times is a complex process even if it is an in-house service running on a
private network. If this is an external internet service, the process is much more
complex because of the sheer number of different organizations and technologies
involved.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Also the data can be used to predict future resource usage, or to monitor actual
business growth against predicted growth.

Analysis of the data may identify issues such as:

• ‘Bottlenecks’ or ‘hot spots’ within the infrastructure

• Inappropriate distribution of workload across available resources
• Inappropriate database indexing
• Inefficiencies in the application design
• Unexpected increase in workloads or transaction rates
• Inefficient scheduling or memory usage.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Tuning techniques that are of assistance include:

• Balancing workloads and traffic

• Balancing disc traffic
• Definition of an affective locking strategy that specifies when locks are
necessary and the appropriate level.
• Efficient use of memory.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

However, care must be taken when setting thresholds, because many thresholds are
dependent on the work being run on the particular component.

The management and control of service and component thresholds is fundamental to

the effective delivery of services to meet their agreed service levels. It ensures that
all service and component thresholds are maintained at the appropriate levels and
are continuously, automatically monitored, and alerts and warnings generated when
breaches occur. Whenever monitored thresholds are breached or threatened, then
alarms are raised and breaches, warnings and exception reports are produced.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

The influence on services that are running could be exercised by:

• Physical constraints
• Financial constraints

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Different types of modeling range from making estimates base on experience and
current resource utilization information, to pilot studies, prototypes and full-scale
benchmarks. With all types of modeling, similar level of accuracy can be obtained,
but all are totally dependent on the skill of the person constructing the model and the
information used to create it.

The first stage of modeling is to create a baseline model that reflects accurately the
performance that is being achieved.

Trend analysis can be done on the resource utilization and service performance
information that had been collected b y the Capacity Management process.

Analytical models are representation of behavior of computer systems

mathematical techniques, This technique requires less time and effort than
simulation modeling, but is typically less accurate.

Simulation modeling involves modeling of discrete events e.g. transaction arrival

rates, against a given hardware configuration. This type of modeling can be very
accurate in sizing new applications, but can be time consuming and therefore costly.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

The primary objective of application sizing is to estimate the resource requirements

to support a proposed change to an existing service or the implementation of a new
service, to ensure that it meets its required service levels. To achieve this,
application sizing has to be an integral part of the Service Lifecycle.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

The Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) is key to the success of

the process and is a logical database (NOT necessarily ONE physical DB)

The CMIS contains much more than just technical data:

Business Data: Used to forecast and validate how changes in business drivers
affect performance and capacity

Service Data: Gathered from resources and provides data on performance and
capacity of services.

Technical Data: Performance and capacity data at the IT component level includes
threshold alerts.

Financial Data: For doing cost-benefit analysis of upgrade proposals, RFCs and
Capacity Planning.

Utilization Data: Utilization of IT components by time periods (e.g. second, minute,

hour, day, etc) Setting up a hierarchical structure for utilization data allows for data
consolidation, refinement and archiving.

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Capacity Management Workbook

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 Capacity Management Workbook

The outputs of Capacity Management are used with all other parts of the process, by
many other processes and by other parts of the organization. Often this information
is supplied as electronic reports or displays on shared areas, or as pages on intranet
servers, to ensure that the most up to date information is available and used.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Some of the Key Performance Indicators and metrics can be used to judge the
effectiveness and efficiency of the Capacity Management activities.

More information on Reports, KPIs and other Metrics can be found on page 77.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Point one – particularly true in outsourced situations where there may be commercial
or confidential reasons why this data cannot be shared. Even if the data on the
strategic business plan is available, there may be issues with regard to the quality or
accuracy of the data contained within the business plans with regard to Business
Capacity Management.

Point two – particularly challenging when the information from the different
technologies is provided by different tools in differing formats. Often the quality of
component information on the performance of the technology is variable in both its
quality and accuracy.

Point three – this is a huge job and the analysis of this information is difficult to
achieve. The people and the processes need to focus on the key resources and
their usage, whilst not ignoring other areas.

A Communication Plan can be found on page 83.

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Capacity Management Workbook

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 Capacity Management Workbook

In addition, further risk can be added if the Service Capacity Management and the
Component Capacity Management activities are performed in isolation because
Business Capacity Management is difficult, or there is a lack of appropriate and
accurate business information. Furthermore, if reports and information that is
provided are too bulky or too technical and do not give the information required or
appropriate to the customer and the business.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

More information on the roles and responsibilities of the Capacity Manager

Process Manager can be found on page 89.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management is critical for ensuring effective and efficient capacity and
performance IT Services and IT components in line with business requirements and
overall IT strategic objectives.

Capacity Management utilizes information from and provides information to all

phases of the Service Lifecycle.

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Capacity Management Workbook

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 Capacity Management Workbook

3 SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS

Through the documents, look for text surrounded by << and >> these are
indicators for you to create some specific text.

Watch also for highlighted text which provides further guidance and
instructions.

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Capacity Management Workbook

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 Capacity Management Workbook

3.1 Objectives and Goals

IT Services
Detailed Objectives/Goals
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Detailed Objectives/Goals for Capacity Management

The document is not to be considered an extensive statement as its topics have to

be generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be
considered.

The detailed objectives for Capacity Management should include the following
salient points:

Objective Notes

To ensure the right level of Capacity for the Business, IT Met/Exceeded/Shortfall

Services and the supporting infrastructure through a
constant cycle of optimization, predication, and influence. ☺
Capacity Management will provide a cost effective
approach to managing capacity that is aligned with needs Dates/names/role titles
and objectives of the business.

Minimize the adverse affects on the IT Infrastructure and

the Business by designing for Capacity.

Once developed a Capacity Management process can be

used to plan for the right capacity for the business before
preventing loss of service that can cause significant harm
to the business.

To establish efficient assessment guidelines that cover the

business, technical and financial aspects of Capacity
Management and the supporting infrastructure.

Generally this will involve different people so the challenge

is designing a process that minimizes the time taken.

To develop a variety of activities to accommodate for the

required Capacity of the IT Infrastructure.

For example, there are a wide variety of potential impacts

that loss of service due to capacity may have on the
environment. If we can categorize and target these areas,
then we can pre-build models for dealing with them. We
call this Modeling.

To establish ground rules that distinguish between

Business Capacity Management, Service Capacity

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Management, and Resource Capacity Management.

Develop working relationships with all other process areas.

The Capacity Management process should be considered

a proactive one requiring input from other process areas.
Obvious links include Service Level Management (to help
gather requirements), and Network Management tools (to
identify potential threats to service to the IT Infrastructure).

Develop a sound Capacity Management process and look

for continuous improvement.

Use these objectives to generate discussion about others that may be more
appropriate to list than those provided.

Refer also to the Communication Plan document, found on page 83, for ideas on how
to communicate the benefits of Capacity Management.

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Capacity Management Workbook

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 Capacity Management Workbook

3.2 Typical Contents of a Recovery Plan

Introduction

This section should briefly describe the background to this issue of the Capacity
Plan, how it was produced and what it contains. For example:

• The current services and technology and resources

• The organization’s current levels of capacity
• Problems being experienced or envisaged due to over- or under-capacity
• The degree to which service levels are being achieved
• What has changed since the last issue of the plan

Management Summary

Much of the Capacity Plan, by necessity, contains technical detail that is not of
interest to all readers of the plan. Main issues, options, recommendations and costs
should be highlighted in the management summary. It may be necessary to produce
a separate executive summary document that contains the main points from each of
the sections of the main plan.

Business Scenarios

It is necessary to put the plan into the context of the current and envisaged business
environment. It is important then, the mention explicitly all known business forecasts
so that readers can determine what is within and what is outside the scope of the
plan. This should include the anticipated growth in existing services, the potential
new services and existing services scheduled for closure.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Scope and Terms of Reference of the Plan

Ideally, the Capacity Plan should encompass all IT resources. This section should
explicitly name those elements of the IT infrastructure that are included and those
that may be excluded.

Methods Used

The Capacity Plan uses information gathered by the sub-processes. Details of how
and when this information was obtained should be contained in this sub-section. This
may include business forecasts obtained from business plans, workload forecasts
obtained from customers or service level forecasts obtained by the use of modeling
tools.

Assumptions Made

Any assumptions made, particularly those concerning the business drivers for IT
Capacity, must be highlighted early on in the plan. If they are cornerstones on which
more detailed calculations are built, then it is critical that this is understood by all
concerned parties.

Service Summary

The service summary section should include:

• Current and recent service provision: for each service that is delivered,
provide a service profile. This should include throughput rates and the
resulting resource utilization – for example, of memory, storage, space,
transfer rates, processor usage and network usage. Short-, medium- and
long-term trends should be presented here

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 Capacity Management Workbook

• Service Forecasts: the business plans should provide Capacity Management

with details of the new services planned and the growth or contraction in the
use of existing services. This sub-section should report on new services and
the demise of legacy systems.

Resource Summary

The resource summary section should include:

• Current and recent resource usage: this sub-section concentrates on the

resulting resource usage by the service. It reports, again, on the short-,
medium- and long-term trends in resource usage, broken down by hardware
platform. This information has been gathered and analyzed by the sub-
processes of Service Capacity Management and Component Capacity
Management and so should be readily available
• Resource forecasts: this should forecast the likely resource usage resulting
from the service forecasts. Each business scenario mentioned above should
be addressed here.

Options for Service Improvement

This section outlines the possible options for improving the effectiveness and
efficiency of Service Delivery, building on the results of the previous section. It could
contain options for merging different services on a single processor, upgrading the
network to take advantage of technological advances, tuning the use of resource or
service performance, rewriting legacy systems, purchasing new hardware or
software etc.

Costs Forecast

The costs associated with these options should be documented here. In addition, the
current and forecasted cost of providing IT services should be included. In practice,

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management obtains much of this information from the Financial

Management process and the IT Financial Plan.

Recommendations

The final section of the plan should contain a summary of the recommendations
made in the previous plan and their status – for example, rejected, planned,
implemented and any variances from the plan. Any new recommendations should be
made here, i.e. which of the options mentioned in the plan is preferred, and the
implications if the plan and its recommendations are not implemented should also be
included.

The recommendations should be quantified in terms of the:

• Business benefits to be expected

• Potential impact of carrying out the recommendations
• Risks involved
• Resources required
• Cost, both set-up and ongoing

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3.3 Policies, Objectives & Scope

IT Services
Policies, Objectives and Scope
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Policies, Objectives and Scope for Capacity Management

The document is not to be considered an extensive statement as its topics have to

be generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be
considered.

Policy Statement

A course of action, guiding principle, or procedure considered expedient, prudent, or

advantageous

Use this text box to answer the “SENSE OF URGENCY” question regarding this process.

Why is effort being put into this process?

Not simply because someone thinks it’s a good idea. That won’t do. The reason has to be
based in business benefits.

You must be able to concisely document the reason behind starting or improving this
process.

Is it because of legal requirements or competitive advantage? Perhaps the business has

suffered major problems or user satisfaction ratings are at the point where outsourcing is
being considered.

A policy statement any bigger than this text box, may be too lengthy to read, lose the
intended audience with detail, not be clearly focused on answering the WHY question for this
process.

The above Policy Statement was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Objectives Statement

Something worked toward or striven for; a goal

Use this text box to answer the “WHERE ARE WE GOING” question regarding this
process.

What will be the end result of this process and how will we know when we have
reached the end result?
Will we know because we will establish a few key metrics or measurements or will it be
a more subjective decision, based on instinct?

A generic sample statement on the “objective” for Capacity Management is:

The object of Capacity Management is to provide the right capacity, for the right
customer, at the right location, for the right costs. This will help ensure that the
capability of the IT Services and the supporting Infrastructure can be delivered in
line with the Business Objectives. In addition to this, Capacity Management will
perform iterative optimization activities to ensure constant improvements and
alignment.

Note the keywords in the statement. For the statement on Capacity Management
they are “cost effective” and “right customer, right location”. These are definite
areas that we can set metrics for and therefore measure progress.

An objective statement any bigger than this text box, may be too lengthy to read, lose
the intended audience with detail, not be clearly focused on answering the WHERE
question for this process.

The above Objective Statement was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

Refer to the Reports KPI's & other metrics document, found on page 77,
for further information on metrics, KPI’s for Capacity Management.

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Scope Statement

The area covered by a given activity or subject

Use this text box to answer the “WHAT” question regarding this process.

What are the boundaries for this process?

What does the information flow look like into this process and from this process to
other processes and functional areas?

A generic sample statement on the “scope” for Capacity Management is:

The Capacity Management process will be responsible for monitoring and

modeling the right amount of capacity for the following:
• Hardware
• Software
• System Software
• Etc

Capacity Management will not be responsible for those components that exist
under the banner of Applications Development. Capacity issues will be
reported to the Service Desk, via the Incident Management process.

A scope statement any bigger than this text box, may be too lengthy to read, lose
the intended audience with detail, not be clearly focused on answering the WHAT
question for this process.

The above Scope Statement was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

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3.4 Business Justification Document

IT Services
Business Justification
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Business Justification Document for Capacity Management

The document is not to be considered an extensive statement as its topics have to

be generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be
considered.

This document serves as a reference for HOW TO APPROACH THE TASK OF

SEEKING FUNDS for the implementation of the Capacity Management process.

This document provides a basis for completion within your own organization.

This document was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

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 Capacity Management Workbook

Capacity Management Business Justification

A strong enough business case will ensure progress and funds are made available
for any IT initiative.

This may sound like a bold statement but it is true. As IT professionals we have (for
too long) assumed that we miss out on funds while other functional areas (e.g.
Human resources and other shared services) seem to get all that they want.

However, the problem is not with them, it’s with US. We are typically poor
salespeople when it comes to putting our case forward.

We try to impress with technical descriptions, rather than talking in a language that a
business person understands.

For example:

We say We should say

We have to increase IT security controls, Two weeks ago our biggest competitor lost
with the implementation of a new firewall. information that is now rumoured to be
available on the internet.

The network bandwidth is our biggest The e-mail you send to the other national
bottleneck and we have to go to a switched managers will take 4 to 6 hours to be
local environment. delivered. It used to be 2 to 3 minutes, but
we are now using our computers for many
more tasks.

Changes to the environment are scheduled We are making the changes on Sunday
for a period of time when we expect there afternoon. There will be less people
to be minimal business impact. working then.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

To help reinforce this point even further, consider the situation of buying a new
fridge. What if the technically savvy sales person wants to explain “the intricacies of
the tubing structure used to super cool the high pressure gases, which flow in an
anti-clockwise direction in the Southern hemisphere”.

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Wouldn’t you say “too much information, who cares – does it make things cold?”

Well IT managers need to stop trying to tell business managers about the tubing
structure and just tell them what they are interested in.

So let’s know look at some benefits of Capacity Management. Remember that the
comments here are generic, as they have to apply to any organization.

Benefits Notes/Comments/Relevance
Through a properly controlled and structured
Capacity Management process we will be able to
more effectively help in the alignment of the delivery
of IT service to the business requirements.

This is achieved through the nature of the process

by understanding such things as Business Capacity,
Service Capacity and Component Capacity and the
true needs of the business.

A structured approach to monitoring, defining and

influencing capacity use will therefore allow IT to
spend more time on aligning the IT Services with the
needs of the Business.
A heightened visibility and increased communication
related to Capacity of Services for both business
and IT support staff.

The reader should be able to draw upon experience

regarding the overall negative impact on the
business when IT departments have been
concerned with supplying the wrong levels of
capacity for services that are critical to the business.
Organizations and therefore IT environments are
becoming increasingly complex and continually
facing new challenges.

The ability to meet these challenges is dependent

on the speed and flexibility of the organization. The
ability to cope with more changes at the business
level will be directly impacted by how well IT
Departments can reduce “loss of service time” due
to poor Capacity Management planning.

(Reader, here you can describe a missed

opportunity, due to bad Capacity Management or a
process dragged down by bureaucracy)

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Noticeable increases in the potential productivity of

end users and key personnel through reduced
interruption times, higher levels of availability
because the right capacity has been planned for
and implemented.

The goal statement of Capacity Management is to

provide the right capacity, for the right customer, at
the right location, against the right costs. By the very
nature of this statement we can expect to start
seeing a reduction in the cost of Capacity, which
can be funneled in other areas that will help improve
the delivery of the IT Services, for example:,
Availability Management.

Whether end users and staff take advantage of this

reduced down-time is not an issue for IT
professionals to monitor. Knowing that we have
made more working time available is what we need
to publish – NOT productivity rates.
An ITIL Capacity Management process will guide
you towards understanding the financial implications
of capacity requirements needed in the IT
infrastructure.

This has real benefits as it may prevent an

organization from spending money on areas of the
IT Infrastructure where there really isn’t a need for
building high capacity services for the business.
With a sound Capacity Management process we
can expect an overall improvement in the level of
service as better planning can occur under a
structured, repeatable process.
Any ITIL process has the potential to increase the
credibility of the IT group, as they offer a higher
quality of service, combined with an overall
professionalism that can be lacking in ad-hoc
activities.

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3.5 Business and IT Service Mapping

IT Services
Business and IT Service Mapping

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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Document Control
Author

Prepared by <name and / or department>

Document Source

This document is located on the LAN under the path:

I:/IT Services/Service Delivery/Business and IT Service Mapping/

Document Approval

This document has been approved for use by the following:

♦ <first name, last name>, IT Services Manager

♦ <first name, last name>, IT Service Delivery Manager

♦ <first name, last name>, National IT Help Desk Manager

Amendment History

Issue Date Amendments Completed By

Distribution List

When this procedure is updated the following copyholders must be advised

through email that an updated copy is available on the intranet site:

<Company Name> Stakeholders

Business Unit

IT

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Introduction
Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide relevant IT departments with an

understanding of how the IT Services provided map to the organization’s
business processes.

Scope

This document describes the following:

details of each Business Process and the corresponding IT Service

provided by the IT departments within the Organization:

description of business process

description of service

business contacts

service contacts

Note: It is assumed for each Business Process and IT Service described in

this document that the supporting back-end technology is already in place
and operational.

Audience

This document is relevant to all staff in <company name>

Ownership

IT Services has ownership of this document in conjunction with nominated

Business Representatives.

Related Documentation

The following documents may help you to complete or understand the

purpose of this document:

Relevant SLA and procedural documents

Relevant IT Services Catalogue

Relevant Technical Specification documentation

Relevant Functional Specification documentation

Relevant User Guides and Procedures

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Executive Overview

In the past organization’s IT Services have generally grown and developed into large
complex environments. Unfortunately this growth has not always been as structured
and pre-planned as it needs to be.

This has resulted in the IT department not having a very clear picture of all the
services they currently provide with no accurate profile of the actual customers for
each of these services.

Therefore it has become imperative for the IT department to establish an accurate

picture of the services it provides.

This document describes an approach for mapping IT Services to the Business

Process.

Mapping Business Process and IT Service: An approach

Most organizations now understand the benefits of having Information Technology

(IT) throughout their structure. Few realize the potential of truly aligning the IT
department’s objectives with the business objectives. However, more and more
organizations are beginning to recognize IT as being a crucial delivery mechanism of
services to their customers.

When the IT services are so critical, steps must be in place to ensure that the IT
group adds value and delivers consistently.

In line with this concept, the first step in mapping IT Services to the needs of the
business is to understand the Organization.

An organization starts with a Mission Statement. The Mission Statement for an

Organization defines its reason for being. Once we capture the Mission Statement,
the next thing to look at is the Vision Statement.

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The Vision Statement defines where it is that the organization wants to go. By
understanding where the organization wishes to position itself within its market
space, then we can start looking at how its short term and long term objectives align
with this.

At this point we now need to start capturing the “objectives and strategy” of the
Organization. By having this information, IT departments are more likely to be aware
of the pressing business issues and needs that may impact on the services that they
provide. For example, the organization may have an objective of expanding its
business into new markets within the next 12 months, requiring additional offices and
staff. The direct impact on IT departments would be the successful planning of
capacity of new IT Services, the successful planning of how to change our current
services to meet the demands of the business, and being flexible enough to meet
these demands.

However, an objective is not sufficient enough to determine how IT departments

should be delivering its services. The Organization will meet these objectives by
changing, enhancing or creating new business processes. For example, Admin staff
may need additional resources, a new ordering package may be required, or
perhaps a new billing process needs to be implemented to meet these objectives.

Therefore, after capturing the Organizational objectives, we need to understand how

these map to current business process, if the current business processes are
changing or becoming defunct and if there will be any new business processes.

This is where the IT departments need to capture the Business Processes being
used by the Organization.

Once the IT departments have a clear view of each of the business units involved in
the business process, we need to capture the fact that the business processes need
one or more IT services (e.g. CRM application, e-mail, word processing, financial
tools) to function.

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Each of these IT services runs on IT infrastructure. This is where IT departments

now map the IT Services to those Business Processes listed above.

With this information IT Departments will now be able to clearly see how their IT
Infrastructure / IT Services supports the business. This allows IT to better deliver IT
aligned Services to the Organization.

A simple model for this approach is illustrated below.

• What are the Objectives of the Organization? What are its Mission and
Vision?
• What Business Processes are in place or will be in place to meet these
needs?
• What IT Services are needed or in place to service the Business Processes?

Business
Objectives

Business
Processes

IT Services

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Mission Statement

A mission statement describes the reason for the organization’s being. Without an
understanding of the mission statement of an organization, it becomes hard to define
what it is that the organization is trying to achieve.

In this section of the document capture the mission statement of the organization. It
is important to show that the IT department is aware of the business.

Vision Statement

In this section, document the Vision statement for the Organization.

Below is a text example of what may be included in this section.

<<

Listed below is the Vision Statement for <Company Name>:

• Quality Care
• Convenient Service
• Good Experiences
• Care at Competitive Prices
• Service You'll Recommend to Friends and Family

These are the major goals of the staff at <Company Name>. With over 150 services
and 400 staff, we constantly strive to provide the highest-quality service throughout
the Mid-South.

>>

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Business Process Summary

The below table is an example of a Business Process Summary Table. Columns and
Rows can be added as needed.

<<

Process Name: The name of the process if available

Process Owner: The name of the Department head or Business Representative for
the process
Description: A brief description of the process
Department(s): The Department(s) that is involved or uses this process
Parent Process: Any process that may be considered a lead into this process or is
seen has having a higher business criticality
Triggers: What causes the process to start? This is important as IT can then
determine if and how their Services interact with other business process or external
organizations.

>>

Process Process Description Department(s) Parent Process Triggers

Name Owner

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Business Process A

This section of the document should be repeated for each Business Process.

Department
Name of the department

Process
Name of the process, and official abbreviation, if any

Process Owner
Name of the Department head or person responsible for ensuring the
effectiveness and efficiency of the process.

Description
Briefly explain the purpose of the business process.

Parent Business Activity/Process

Name of the parent business activity or process, if any

Primary Product(s)
List the primary product(s), and explain if necessary. Identify the customer for
each primary product.

Trigger(s)
List the event(s) that trigger the process. (Triggers can be a calendar date, as
well as an actual event.)

Sub-processes
If the process is subdivided, list the sub-processes here.

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Standard Path Events/Activities

List the important activities and/or events that occur as part of the standard path
for this process. If an activity or event occurs in a specific sub-process, identify
the sub-process that includes the activity/event. Note any locations where an
alternative path breaks off from the standard path.

Alternative Path Events/Activities

List the important activities and/or events that occur as part of the alternative path
for this process, beginning with a note on where the alternative path breaks off
from the standard path, and ending with a note on where the alternative path
rejoins the standard path, if it does. If an activity or event occurs in a specific sub-
process, identify the sub-process that includes the activity/event.

Inputs
List the inputs to the process, and explain if necessary. Identify the source of the
input. If the input is specific to a sub-process, identify the sub-process.

Secondary Products
List the by-products, or minor outputs that result from the process. Identify the
customer for each output. If the secondary product is specific to a sub-process,
identify the sub-process.

Participants
List the participants (actors) in the process, and explain their function briefly. If
the participant is active only in a specific sub-process, identify the sub-process.

IT Services
The following section provides a table for capturing those IT Services that help
support the business process listed above.

<<

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Fields:

• IT Service: In this field capture the name of the IT Service. A likely source of
for this information would be the IT Service Catalogue.
• Description: Write a brief description about the service.
• IT Service Owner: List any responsibilities for this IT Service. This would
include the owner of the IT Service and any additional support personnel that
are involved in the deliver of the IT Service.
• Hours of Availability: List the hours of support for the particular IT Service.
E.g. 24 hours x 7 Days per week, Monday – Friday: 8.00am – 6.00pm, etc.
• Contract: Is the IT Service provided under the agreement of a contract? If so,
it is important to capture any contracts that may be in place for the IT Service.
Contracts will have a direct impact on how the IT Service is delivered.
• Service Level Agreements: List any applicable SLAs for the IT Service.
• Impact: If the particular IT Service was unavailable, how would this impact on
the Business Process.
>>

This table should be used on a landscape page layout.

IT Description IT Service Hours of Contract Service Level Impact

Service Owner Availability Agreements

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Business Process B

Department

Process

Process Owner

Description

Parent Business Activity/Process

Primary Product(s)

Trigger(s)

Sub-processes

Standard Path Events/Activities

Alternative Path Events/Activities

Inputs

Secondary Products

Participants

IT Services

IT Service Description IT Hours of Contract Service Level Impact

Service Availability Agreements
Owner

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Business Process and IT Service Summary

This section provides a summary matrix table of the business processes and their
corresponding IT Services.

This is a comprehensive summary table designed to be tailored for your needs. If

necessary add or remove rows and columns as needed. A more simple matrix may
be just as effective for your needs.

The table breaks down the IT Services and offers you the ability to capture the owner
of the IT Service, the impact of the service on the business process and the agreed
service hours.

The impact is an arbitrary value that IT and the business need to agree upon. These
values may be defined within the Service Catalogue or the Service Level
Agreements.

The table also breaks down the Business Processes and offers you the ability to
capture the department(s) that are involved in that particular business process, the
business owner of the process, and the business rating.

The Business Owner may be hard to define in an organization, in this instance there
maybe a number of owners of the process which would generally be made up of the
Department heads.

The Business Rating is also an arbitrary value that the business needs to agree
upon. In most instances each department will rate their business processes Critical
or Very High. The easy way to determine the Business Rating of the process would
be to ascertain if the business could still deliver its services if that business process
was unavailable for a period of time.

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Business Process A Business Process B

Department Owner Business Department Owner Business
Rating Rating
IT Services Accounting I. Very High Admin A. Medium
Process Admin
Owner R. Nerdy
Service Impact Very High
A Service 24 x 7
Hours
Owner R. Nerdy
Service Impact High
B Service Mon-Fri: 8am -
Hours 6pm
Owner A. Service
Service Impact Medium
C Service Mon-Sat: 6am
Hours - 6pm
Owner S. Jones
Service Impact Low
D Service Mon-Fri: 6am -
Hours 10pm

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Appendices

List any appendices needed in conjunction with this document.

Terminology

IT Infrastructure: includes hardware, software, procedures, policies, documentation,

etc.

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3.6 Roles & Responsibilities

Capacity Manager

A Capacity Manager has responsibility for ensuring that the aims of Capacity
Management are met. This includes such tasks as:

• Ensuring that there is adequate IT capacity to meet required levels of service,

and that senior IT management is correctly advised on how to match capacity
and demand and to ensure that use of existing capacity is optimized
• Identifying, with the Service Level Manager, capacity requirements through
discussions with the business users
• Understanding the current usage of the infrastructure and IT services, and the
maximum capacity of each component
• Performing sizing on all proposed new services and systems, possibly using
modeling techniques, to ascertain capacity requirements
• Forecasting future capacity requirements based on business plans, usage
trends, sizing of new services, etc.
• Production, regular review and revision of the Capacity Plan, in line with the
organization’s business planning cycle, identifying current usage and forecast
requirements during the period covered by the plan
• Ensuring that appropriate levels of monitoring of resources and system
performance are set
• Analysis of usage and performance data, and reporting on performance
against targets contained in SLAs
• Raising incidents and problems when breaches of capacity or performance
thresholds are detected, and assisting with the investigation and diagnosis of
capacity-related incidents and problems
• Identifying and initiating and tuning to be carried out to optimize and improve
capacity or performance
• Identifying and implementing initiatives to improve resource usage – for
example, demand management techniques

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• Assessing new technology and its relevance to the organization in terms of

performance and cost
• Being familiar with potential future demand for IT services and assessing this
on performance service levels
• Ensuring that all changes are assessed for their impact on capacity and
performance and attending CAB meetings when appropriate
• Producing regular management reports that include current usage of
resources, trends and forecasts
• Sizing all proposed new services and systems to determine the computer and
network resources required, to determine hardware utilization, performance
service levels and cost implications
• Assessing new techniques and hardware and software products for use by
Capacity Management that might improve the efficiency and effectiveness of
the process
• Performance testing of new services and systems
• Reports on service and component performance against targets contained in
SLAs
• Maintaining a knowledge of future demand for IT services and predicting the
effects of demand on performance service levels
• Determining performance service levels that are maintainable and cost-
justified
• Recommending tuning services and systems, and making recommendations
to IT management on the design and use of systems to help ensure optimum
use of all hardware and operating system software resources
• Acting as a focal point for all capacity and performance issues.

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3.7 Reports, KPIs and other Metrics

IT Services
Reports and KPI Targets
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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Reports and KPI Targets for Capacity Management

The document is not to be considered an extensive statement as its topics have to be

generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be considered.

This document serves as a GUIDE ON SUITABLE KEY PERFORMANCE

INDICATORS (KPIs) and REPORTS FOR MANAGEMENT for the Capacity
Management process. This document provides a basis for completion within
your own organization.

This document contains suggestions regarding the measures that would be

meaningful for this process. The metrics demonstrated are intended to show
the reader the range of metrics that can be used. The message must also be
clear that technology metrics must be heavily supplemented with non-
technical and business focused metrics/KPI’s/measures.

This document was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

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Key performance indicators (KPI’s)

Continuous improvement requires that each process needs to have a plan about
“how” and “when” to measure its own performance. While there can be no set
guidelines presented for the timing of these reviews; the “how” question can be
answered with metrics and measurements.

With regard to timing of reviews then factors such as resource availability, cost and
“nuisance factor” need to be accounted for. Many initiatives begin with good
intentions to do regular reviews, but these fall away very rapidly. This is why the
process owner must have the conviction to follow through on assessments and
meetings and reviews, etc. If the process manager feels that reviews are too seldom
or too often then the schedule should be changed to reflect that.

Establishing SMART targets is a key part of good process management.

SMART is an acronym for:

Simple
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time Driven

Metrics help to ensure that the process in question is running effectively.

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With regard to CAPACITY MANAGEMENT the following metrics and associated

targets should be considered:

Target Value Time Frame/Notes/Who

Key Performance Indicator
(some
examples)
Using data from the Configuration
Management Database (CMDB) indicate any
particular Configuration items that are
experiencing frequent losses or degradation
of service due to capacity issues.
Number of Incidents logged relating to
Capacity issues.
Capacity Management Trend Analysis

This should be done by:

• Business Capacity
• IT Service Capacity
• IT Component Capacity

This can be further broken down by using

Incident management to supply the following:
• Type
• Category
• Priority, Impact, Urgency
The average cost per capacity issue

What is the client perspective with relation to

Capacity of IT Services?

Number of Capacity Management meetings.

This will indicate a constant cycle of

discussions and a process of improvement.

Increased Learning and growth.

This refers to the interaction with other

processes, staffing, training and investments
in software and hardware.

Special Tip: Beware of using percentages in too many cases. It may even be better
to use absolute values when the potential number of maximum failures is less than
100.

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Reports for Management

Management reports help identify future trends and allow review of the “health” of
the process. Setting a security level on certain reports may be appropriate as well as
categorizing the report as Strategic, Operational or Tactical.

The acid test for a relevant report is to have a sound answer to the question; “What
decisions is this report helping management to make?”

Management reports for Capacity Management should include:

Report Time Frame/Notes/Who

The number of Incidents lodged as a result of loss
of service due to capacity issues.

As well as the numbers, a very concise view of

major failures in capacity can also be included.
Demand Management Analysis

Report provides a detailed analysis of where and

how the use of IT Services can be influenced.

Classic areas include looking at the Internet sites

and seeing which of the top 10 sites visited are not
necessary to the roles and responsibilities within the
organization.

In the event of blocking sites, managers may come

back and indicate that it does not affect an
individual’s performance. This may be the case, but
it is not the IT departments concern, their concern is
to reduce the cost of capacity which includes the
costs involved in supplying internet connectivity.
Summary of capacity recommendations for the
coming year.

The business will interested in this as it shows a

proactive approach to providing IT Services and
demonstrating the benefits to the business.

This needs to be done for:

• Business Capacity
• Service Capacity
• Component Capacity

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The number of incidents attributable to different

business areas is also useful. This will help
Management to understand departments that are in
a state of continual disruption. Incidents can indicate
poor management, fluctuating internal or increasing
pressures from external forces.

Service Level Achievements.

These are essentially service management reports,

which the business managers will use for
understanding if their SLAs are being met.

In addition to this, other Service Managers can use

these reports for high-level process control.

Analysis and results of meetings completed

The situation regarding the process staffing levels

and any suggestions regarding redistribution,
recruitment and training required.

Human resource reporting including hours worked

against activities (including weekend/after hours
work, for example, on call duties).
Relevant Financial information– to be provided in
conjunction with Financial Management for IT
Services

This information will include costs relating to the

building of appropriate infrastructure to maintain the
right levels of availability.

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3.8 Communication Plan

IT Services
Communication Plan
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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Communication Plan for Capacity Management

The document is not to be considered an extensive statement as its topics have to

be generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be
considered.

This document serves as a GUIDE FOR COMMUNICATIONS REQUIRED for the

Capacity Management process. This document provides a basis for
completion within your own organization.

This document contains suggestions regarding information to share with

others. The document is deliberately concise and broken into communication
modules. This will allow the reader to pick and choose information for e-mails,
flyers, etc. from one or more modules if and when appropriate.

This document was;

Prepared by:
On: <<date>>

And accepted by:

On: <<date>>

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Initial Communication

Sell the Benefits

First steps in communication require the need to answer the question that most
people (quite rightly) ask when the IT department suggests a new system, a new
way of working. WHY?

It is here that we need to promote and sell the benefits. However, be cautious of
using generic words. Cite specific examples from your own organization that the
reader will be able to relate to.

Generic Benefit statements Specific Organizational example

Improved Customer Service This is important because…

Reduction in the number of Incidents In recent times our incidents within IT
have…
Provides quicker resolution of Apart from the obvious benefits, the IT
Incidents department in recent times has…
Improved Organizational learning A recent example of … saw the
individual and others in the company
start to…

The above Communication module (or elements of) was/were distributed;

To:
On: <<date>>

By:
On: <<date>>

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Capacity Management Goal

The Goal of Capacity Management

The Goal of Capacity Management can be promoted in the following manner.

Official Goal Statement: To provide the right capacity, for the right customers,
at the right location, against the right costs.

• High visibility and wide channels of communication are essential in this

process. Gather specific Capacity Requirements from nominated personnel

(Special Tip: Beware of using only Managers to gain information from, as the
resistance factor will be high)

• Oversee the monitoring of process to ensure that the business needs of IT

are not impacted, but taking into account that changes are required to
ensure continued high levels of IT Service Delivery and Support Capacity.

• Provide relevant reports to nominated personnel.

(Special Tip: Beware of reporting only to Managers. If you speak to a lot of people
regarding Service Support and Delivery then you need to establish ways to report to
these people the outcomes and progress of the discussions).

Always bear in mind the “so what” factor when discussing areas like goals and
objectives. If you cannot honestly and sensibly answer the question “so what” –
then you are not selling the message in a way that is personal to the listener and
gets their “buy-in”.

The above Capacity Management Goals module was distributed;

To:
On: <<date>>

By:
On: <<date>>

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Capacity Management Activities

Intrusive & Hidden Activities

The list of actions in this module will have a direct impact on end users and IT Staff. They
will be curious as to why staff are working with them in this manner, rather than the
historical method of just “doing it”. There could be an element of suspicion and resistance,
so consider different strategies to overcome this initial skepticism.

Business Capacity Management

• Interview and record the needs from the Business
• Capture and communicate the needs from a business point of view
• Create a capacity plan and distribute this to the organization – Business English

Service Capacity Management

• Perform an assessment of the overall services being offered
• Put in place communication guidelines for communicating IT Services – Do this in
conjunction with Service Level Management
• Communicate to IT to think in terms of service and not just resources.

Component Capacity Management

• Identify and manage each of the components of the IT Infrastructure
• E.g. CPU, memory, disks, network bandwidth
• Evaluates NEW technology
• Communicate the difference between the Business, Service and Resource
Capacity.

Iterative Activities
• Create your re-usable planning documents. These need to be distributed to the
Capacity Team.
• Set-up monitoring parameter and reports – Use Business English.

Demand Management and Modeling

• Communicate the need to manage demand of the capacity
• Set regular meetings to help influence IT Service demand, communicate results
• Use modeling to predict the future of the IT Infrastructure – communicate using
Business English
• Perform and communicate result to the IT teams.

Information regarding activities was distributed;

To:
On: <<date>>

By:
On: <<date>>

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Capacity Management Planning

Costs

Information relating to costs may be a topic that would be held back from general
communication. Failure to convince people of the benefits will mean total rejection
of associated costs. If required, costs fall under several categories:

• Personnel – Capacity Management staff, database management team (Set-

up and ongoing of the availability database)

• Accommodation – Physical location (Set-up and ongoing)

• Software – Tools (Set-up and ongoing)

• Hardware – Infrastructure (Set-up)

• Education – Training (Set-up and ongoing)

• Procedures – external consultants etc (Set-up)

The costs of implementing Capacity Management will be outweighed by the
benefits. For example, many organizations have a negative perception of the
Capacity Management process as it seems to constantly measure the wrong
services. To alleviate this, customers and end-users need to be constantly informed
of the levels of capacity being provided. This provides good customer service and
adds a level of comfort to the users in the sense that they can “see” action taking
place.

A well run Capacity Management process will make major inroads into altering the
perception of the IT Organization.

Details regarding the cost of Capacity Management were distributed;

To:
On: <<date>>

By:
On: <<date>>

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3.9 Capacity Management Process Manager

IT Services
Roles & Responsibilities
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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Detailed responsibilities of the Capacity Management process owner

The Capacity Manager…

Description Notes/Comments
1. Will develop and maintain the Capacity Management Use the
Process. notes/Comment
s column in
Will develop, maintain and promote Capacity different ways.
Management. If you are
2. Will coordinate process reviews utilizing independent looking to apply
parties to provide an objective view on the simplicity of for a process
the process and areas for improvement. role, then you
can check
Will be responsible for implementing any design yourself against
improvements identified. the list (with
3. Will chair the technical meetings that are used to identify ticks or look to
and action capacity issues and to verify that all steps update your
were completed and the objective of the process was resume).
achieved.
4. Arrange and run all Capacity Management reviews with If you are
the Capacity Management team. looking to
appoint a
The reviews where necessary will include other IT process
Departments as well as key customers. manager or
5. Will control and review: promote
someone from
Any outstanding process related actions within the
Current targets for availability performance organization
The process mission statement you can make
notes about
6. Make available relevant, concise reports that are both their abilities in
timely and readable for Customers and Management the particular
area.

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Detailed skills of the Capacity Management process owner

The Capacity Manager…..

Description Notes/Comments
1. The Capacity Manager will display a communication Use the
style based around information and escalation. notes/Comment
s column in
Have practical and quantifiable process management different ways.
experience. If you are
2. High degree of analytical skills to be able to assess the looking to apply
impact of incidents on different business systems and for a process
people. role, then you
can check
High degree of analytical skill needed to be able to help yourself against
in the process of restoring service as quickly as the list (with
possible from a capacity point of view. ticks or look to
3. Technical ability in being able to read data from the update your
Capacity Management process that will help with the resume).
identification of trends and improvements relating to
capacity. If you are
looking to
appoint a
4. An ability to run a meeting according to strict guidelines process
(not to get side-tracked on items that one person may manager or
be interested in). promote
someone from
Must possess skills in influencing and negotiating as within the
well. organization
5. The Capacity Manager must be able to communicate you can make
with people at all levels of the organization. This is notes about
especially important during meetings. their abilities in
the particular
6. The process manager must be able to demonstrate area.
ways to “do things differently” that will improve the
process.

7. Must be able to think logically about capacity issues

that could affect the organization and design
appropriate assessment and diagnosis activities.

This will provide a strong link into the Problem

Management process and Service Level Management
process.

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4 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN – PROJECT PLAN

IT Services
Implementation Plan / Project Plan
Skeleton Outline
Process: Capacity Management

Status: In draft
Under Review
Sent for Approval
Approved
Rejected

Version: <<your version>>

Release Date:

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Planning and implementation for Capacity Management

This document as described provides guidance for the planning and implementation
of the Capacity Management ITIL process.

The document is not to be considered an extensive plan as its topics have to be

generic enough to suit any reader for any organization.

However, the reader will certainly be reminded of the key topics that have to be
considered for planning and implementation of this process.

Initial planning

When beginning the process planning the following items must be completed:

CHECK DESCRIPTION

☺ or
2 or date
Get agreement on the objective (use the ITIL definition), purpose, scope, and
implementation approach (e.g. Internal, outsourced, hybrid) for the process.

Assign a person to the key role of process manager/owner. This person is

responsible for the process and all associated systems.

This person will generally be the Network or Operations Manager.

Conduct a review of activities that would currently be considered as an activity

associated with this process. Make notes and discuss the “re-usability” of that
activity.
Key activities of Capacity Management are:
• Gathering Capacity Requirements
• Modeling the IT Infrastructure to plan for Capacity
• Application Sizing, to determine the right capacity for applications
• Managing and influencing the use of IT Services.

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Create and gain agreement on a high-level process plan and a design for any
associated process systems. NOTE: the plan need not be detailed. Too many
initiatives get caught up in too much detail in the planning phase. KEEP THE
MOMENTUM GOING.

Review the finances required for the process as a whole and any associated
systems (expenditure including people, software, hardware, accommodation).
Don’t forget that the initial expenditure may be higher than the ongoing costs.
Don’t forget annual allowances for systems maintenance or customizations to
systems by development staff.

Agree to the policy regarding this process.

Create Strategic statements

Refer to the Policies, Objectives and Scope document on page 49 for more
information regarding Policy, Objective and Scope statements.

Policy Statement

The policy establishes the “SENSE OF URGENCY” for the process.

It helps us to think clearly about and agree on the reasons WHY effort is put into this
process.

An inability to answer this seemingly simple, but actually complex question is a major
stepping stone towards successful implementation

The most common mistake made is that reasons regarding IT are given as the WHY
we should do this. Reasons like “to make our IT department more efficient” are far
too generic and don’t focus on the real issue behind why this process is needed.

The statement must leave the reader in no doubt that the benefits of this process will
be far reaching and contribute to the business in a clearly recognizable way.

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Objective Statement

When you are describing the end or ultimate goal for a unit of activity that is about to
be undertaken you are outlining the OBJECTIVE for that unit of activity.

Of course the activity may be some actions for just yourself or a team of people. In
either case, writing down the answer to WHERE will this activity lead me/us/the
organization is a powerful exercise.

There are many studies that indicate the simple act of putting a statement about the
end result expected onto a piece of paper, then continually referring to it, makes
achieving that end result realistic.

As a tip regarding the development of an objective statement; don’t get caught up in

spending hours on this. Do it quickly and go with your instincts or first thoughts –
BUT THEN, wait a few days and review what you did for another short period of time
and THEN commit to the outcome of the second review as your statement.

Scope Statement

In defining the scope of this process we are answering what activities and what
“information interfaces” does this process have.

Don’t get caught up in trying to be too detailed about the information flow into and
out of this process. What is important is that others realize that information does in
fact flow.

For example, with regard to the CAPACITY MANAGEMENT process we can create
a simple table such as:

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Capacity Management Information flows

Process Process Information

Capacity to Availability Cooperation with Availability Management Planning
Management Management
Availability to Capacity Cooperation with Capacity Management Planning
Management Management

Capacity to Change Assessment of RFCs for capacity impact

Management Management
Change to Capacity RFCs for Review
Management Management

Capacity to Service Level Assistance with drafting Operational Level Agreements

Management Management
Service Level to Capacity Attempt to manage workload within SLAs
Management Management

Steps for Implementation

There can be a variety of ways to implement this process. For a lot of organizations
a staged implementation may be suitable. For others a “big bang” implementation –
due to absolute equality may be appropriate.

In reality however, we usually look at implementation according to pre-defined

priorities. Consider the following options and then apply a suitable model to your own
organization or case study.

STEPS NOTES/ /RELEVANCE/DATES/WHO

Define the Objective and Scope for Capacity

Management

Establish and agree on a clear definition for:

• Business Capacity Management

• Service Capacity Management
• Component Capacity Management

This is one of the most interesting aspects. It can be very

difficult to get everyone to agree to a definition, and it can
be very difficult to establish the correct understanding of

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the definition.

However, get this right, and the rest of the process is

made easier.

Seek initial approval

Establish and Define Roles and Responsibilities for the

process. Appoint a Capacity Manager.

Establish and Define the Scope for Capacity Management

and the relationships with IT Services

Establish Capacity Management Process

Establish and Define Relationship with all other

processes.

This is another key aspect of the Capacity Management

process. Capacity Management is where we are helping
set the expectations of service and influence their use.
Capacity Management works closely with Service Level
Management to achieve this.

Establish monitoring levels.

Capacity as seen by the business is related to the service

and not just the components that make up the service.

Remember there are three aspects to Capacity

Management.

Define reporting standards

Publicize and market

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The priority selection has to be made with other factors in mind, such as competitive
analysis, any legal requirements, and desires of “politically powerful influencers”.

Costs

The cost of process implementation is something that must be considered before,

during and after the implementation initiative. The following points and table help to
frame these considerations:

(A variety of symbols have been provided to help you indicate required expenditure,
rising or falling expenditure, level of satisfaction regarding costs in a particular area,
etc.)

Initial During Ongoing

Personnel 0 /
Costs of people for initial design of process,
implementation and ongoing support

Accommodation ☺
Costs of housing new staff and any associated new
equipment and space for documents or process related
concepts.

Software
New tools required to support the process and/or the
costs of migration from an existing tool or system to the
new one.
Maintenance costs

Hardware
New hardware required to support the process
activities. IT hardware and even new desks for staff.

Education
Re-education of existing staff to learn new techniques
and/or learn to operate new systems.

Procedures
Development costs associated with filling in the detail of
a process activity. The step-by-step recipe guides for all
involved and even indirectly involved personnel.

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In most cases, costs for process implementation have to be budgeted for (or
allocated) well in advance of expenditure. Part of this step involves deciding on a
charging mechanism (if any) for the new services to be offered.

Build the team

Each process requires a process owner and in most situations a team of people to
assist.

The Capacity Management process is one of the processes in the Service Delivery
set that shows very visible benefits from the outset and is very influential in
influencing the use of IT Services for its customers and end users.

Of course a lot will be dependent on the timing of the implementation and whether it
is to be staged or implemented as one exercise.

Refer to the Capacity Management Roles & Responsibilities document and the
Capacity Management Process Manager document, found on pages 75 and 89
respectively, for more information on the Capacity Management Process Manager
and roles, responsibilities and tasks of involved personnel.

Analyze current situation and FLAG

Naturally there are many organizations that have many existing

procedures/processes and people in place that feel that the activities of Capacity
Management are already being done. It is critical to identify these systems and
consider their future role as part of the new process definition.

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Examples of areas to review are:

Area Notes
Power teams

Current formal procedures

Current informal procedures

Current role descriptions

Existing organizational structure

Spreadsheets, databases and other repositories

Other…

Implementation Planning

After base decisions regarding the scope of the process and the overall planning
activities are complete we need to address the actual implementation of the process.

It is unlikely that there will not be some current activity or work being performed that
would fit under the banner of this process. However, we can provide a
comprehensive checklist of points that must be reviewed and done.

Implementation activities for Capacity Management

Activity Notes/Commen
ts/Time
Frame/Who
Review current and existing Capacity Management practices in
greater detail. Make sure you also review current process
connections from these practices to other areas of IT Service
Delivery and Support.

Review the ability of existing functions and staff. Can we “reuse”

some of the skills to minimize training, education and time
required for implementation?

Establish the accuracy and relevance of current processes,

procedures and meetings. As part of this step if any information
is credible document the transition from the current format to any
new format that is selected.

Decide how best to select any vendor that will provide assistance

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in this process area (including tools, external consultancy or

assistance to help with initial high workload during process
implementation).

Establish a selection guideline for the evaluation and selection of

tools required to support this process area (i.e. Capacity
Management tools).

Purchase and install tools required to support this process (i.e.

Capacity Management tool). Ensure adequate skills transfer and
on-going support is considered if external systems are selected.

Create any required business processes interfaces for this

process that can be provided by the automated tools (e.g.
reporting – frequency, content).

Document and get agreement on roles, responsibilities and

training plans.

Communicate with and provide necessary education and training

for staff that covers the actual importance of the process and the
intricacies of the process itself.

An important point to remember is that if this process is to be implemented at the

same time as other processes that it is crucial that both implementation plans and
importantly timing of work is complementary.

Cutover to new processes

The question of when a new process actually starts is one that is not easy to answer.
Most process activity evolves without rigid starting dates and this is what we mean
when we answer a question with “that’s just the way it’s done around here”.

Ultimately we do want the new process to become the way things are done around
here, so it may even be best not to set specific launch dates, as this will set the
expectation that from the given date all issues relating to the process will disappear
(not a realistic expectation).

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5 FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on other products available from The Art of Service, you can
visit our website: http://www.theartofservice.com

If you found this guide helpful, you can find more publications from The Art of
Service at: http://www.amazon.com

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