Failure to communicate: Less than 50 percent of IT shops are doing formal capacity management and planning

TeamQuest Corp ., a supplier of IT service optimization (ITSO) software, believes capacity planning and capacity management efforts are ineffective because the majority of IT shops don’t know how to convey results to non-IT managers.
“If you make capacity planning look ponderous, management will kill it,” says Dr. Neil Gunther, founder of Performance Dynamics Co ., and considered a noted expert in capacity planning and performance management.
TeamQuest believes a rebirth of capacity planning is taking place due to the heightened awareness of virtualization. Gunther says capacity planning is a critical responsibility of management infrastructure that is not easy to do and requires a certain form of discipline. However, the purpose of capacity planning tools should be to help IT and management make decisions rapidly.
As business managers become more involved with the IT decisions for their business units, IT must understand what drives business decisions.
“A manager is employed to look after a schedule and he will let a project fail as long as it fails on time,” Gunther explains.
Dr. Gunther shares his experiences with several IT shops, discussing why some capacity plans are more successful than others, and why the right performance management tool is so important.
Access the interview.

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