IVI Framework Viewer

Capacity Trend Analysis

B1

Size the infrastructure based on current and expected business demand — for example, by examining current performance trends or deducing expected capacity needs from the business strategy.

Improvement Planning

Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)

Representative POMs are described for Capacity Trend Analysis at each level of maturity.

1Initial
  • Practice
    Use percentage business volume changes to estimate IT changes.
    Outcome
    Reactive environment with minimal predictability and poor corrective actions, leading to budget overruns and/or over-investment (“sledgehammer to crack a nut”).
    Metrics
    • Number of outages
    • Total downtime
    • Variance from planned BAU cost
    • Helpdesk calls
    • MTTR
2Basic
  • Practices
    • Track capacity utilization to maintain agreed level of headroom.
    • Base future capacity planning on projected business requirements
    Outcome
    Improved IT performance as a consequence of minimising recurring IT issues.
    Metrics
    • Number of incidents per issue-type
    • Number of incidents per category
    • MTBF
3Intermediate
  • Practice
    Size IT infrastructure to match demand for IT services, facilitating prioritisation of investments/disinvestments based on demand, and pushing down cost per service to equal/better industry benchmarks.
    Outcomes
    • Capacity Planning:
    • Improved IT-Business alignment
    • Improved ROI
    • Optimized cost per service
    • Scenario Planning:
    • Improved IT-Business planning
    • Reduction in risk
    • Improved business continuity plans
    • Example CP: Where should we best target part of our IT budget in order to accommodate 1200 users?
    • Example SP: Are our remote access services capable of handling a predicted increase in usage brought about by and outbreak of avian flu?
    Metrics
    • Capacity Planning:
    • ROI
    • IT service cost per user
    • IT asset utilization
    • Stakeholder satisfaction
    • Adoption of IT service metrics by the business
    • IT service metrics
    • Storage requirements per service user (trended)
    • CPU requirements per service user (trended)
    • Bandwidth requirements
    • Scenario Planning:
    • Original predicted impact of incident vs Predicted impact following implementation of new contingency plans
    • Number of times a risk threshold is broken
4Advanced
  • Practice
    Dooe capacity planning (inc. scenario planning/rightsizing/growth planning) quantify IT cost of achieving specific business process performance levels (or business cost of failing to meet agreed performance levels), facilitating appropriate prioritisation.
    Outcomes
    • Improved basis for prioritisation of investments
    • Optimal level of investment in order to achieve target business performance levels (as opposed to excessive overinvestment or under-investment)
    • Potential to manage risk more effectively
    • Continuous improvement in IT service levels
    • Target IT investments and effort in areas where the greatest impact can be made in terms of business process capacity
    • NOTE: This insight can also be helpful in managing change from a legacy application to a new application solution (identifying bottlenecks in its adoption).
    Metrics
    • Transactions handled per IT dollar
    • IT SLAs breached
    • Business process SLAs breached
    • Business process impact (eg additional process capacity) of service investment
    • Business process impact (eg business process hours lost from SLA breaches (ie no investment)
    • Transactions handled per IT dollar
    • Number of business process transactions (or hours) lost due to IT service/component failure
5Optimized
  • Practice
    Use of organization-level scenario planning model to identify IT-derived opportunities for strategic change, to identify impact of new business strategies on IT, and to manage risk more effectively.
    Outcomes
    • Increased confidence in model
    • Improved capability to optimize IT
    Metrics
    • Variance (actual vs planned)
    • ROI (per IT dollar)