This entry is one in a series of Top 10 lessons learned by Ron Potter in his previous job as the Director of Capacity Planning at a Fortune 100 health insurance provider.

Relationships Matter

Whether you realize it or not, building relationships are key to your success. People work together better when it isn’t just another faceless person behind that email or speakerphone. I have made it a point to meet many of my business and IT co-workers. I have participated in company events such as golf tournaments, baseball game outings and fund-raising activities. Participation in activities such as those helps build better working relationships and makes our jobs easier.

Now many of you might perceive this as playing politics and find that distasteful. Politics is not the goal here. In many cases, communication breakdowns occur because we do not know or understand the person originating the request or information and misinterpret it. As a result we go down the wrong road and it usually isn’t caught until late in the service delivery process. When we know each other better, we work together better. Communications disconnects are rare because we know the parties involved and more clearly understand their positions and needs.  Whether you realize it or not, we treat people we know differently. That personal familiarity makes a difference because IT is complex and requires teamwork to be successful. Relationships create those bonds and are needed to more efficiently and accurately complete our day-to-day work.

Until the next post!

Ron

This entry is one in a series of Top 10 lessons learned by Ron Potter in his previous job as the Director of Capacity Planning at a Fortune 100 health insurance provider.

How to find your capacity “tipping point”

No matter what you do, you will always have unforeseen events that will drive IT systems crazy. It will be that way until Murphy’s Law is finally repealed. Few organizations can afford to cover every eventuality. It just isn’t economically feasible. That’s where we come in. Our job is to balance cost, availability and performance.

I believe the best balance is attained through part art and part science. The science part looks at captured data to determine what has occurred in the past. That doesn’t mean that planning for those peaks will mitigate the risk, it just means it will mitigate today’s known risk. Tomorrow’s peak may be higher because Murphy seems to know when you add capacity.

Then the art part comes into play. That involves talking to the people who suffered during those peaks. It permits you to compare different events to determine to what level and severity parts of the organization were impacted. Those discussions help you determine the “tipping point” or point where the level of “pain” on the business becomes intolerable. Your first goal should be to build a capacity plan that satisfies volumes just below that point. Cost the results out. Too high? Reduce the solution until the costs are affordable. The amount of capacity shortfall between the “tipping point” and your solution is your risk. Now go back through historical data and see how many times systems have reached the risk level. Frequently? Maybe time to escalate to management. If you do, you have the data and user experiences to back your recommendations.

Until the next post…

Ron

This entry is one in a series of Top 10 lessons learned by Ron Potter in his previous job as the Director of Capacity Planning at a Fortune 100 health insurance provider.

Short term memory goes first

For the most part, executives have a short attention span. You have to keep reminding them of your past accomplishments, especially when the benefits span IT and non-IT departments. For example, IT adds an application that automates a process. As a result, a business unit needs 200 fewer people. Management makes a conscious decision to add costs to IT in order to enjoy the benefits of the overall reduction. During the next budget cycle, the CIO is attacked because his costs are up while others are substantially down. What went wrong?

When we were developing IT Service Optimization (ITSO) processes, we noticed that several successful IT organizations kept a historical log of their accomplishments and the overall benefits the organization enjoyed as a result of the work. Every year the previous year’s log would be included in the budget submission. A log reminds management of the decisions made over the past year where tradeoffs between technology expense and business cost reductions were made. Doing so usually results in much more constructive budget discussions. As a result, historical logging has been, and will continue to be, an important part of ITSO.  It is included in Step 5 - Manage service performance.

For more information on ITSO, please visit our website or you can always contact us.

Until the next post…

Ron