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.

Change the Conversation

I can’t tell you how many times I have sat in front of my CIO or CFO and seen their eyes glaze over as I presented the IT costs needed to support a particular project. That is because business leaders dislike expenses. However they do like investments with a reasonable return. In order to break the “cost” pattern, we need to change the conversation from one of cost to one of investment.

Consider the following two statements:

1. We need to spend $1.5 million to support the additional sales invoice infrastructure.
2. By investing $1.5 million, we can support the new sales invoicing system and economies of scale as a result will reduce our IT cost per sale by 5%.

Which one would be more appealing to an executive? Probably the second one.

As you can see, by spending more time to frame the information, we can change the conversation to reveal the true business value of a project.

Another way is to give choices. Many capacity planners tell me their business leaders demand sub-second response time so they can improve productivity and thus the bottom line. I have yet to see a study from those business leaders that show they actually analyzed the different productivity gains from changes in response times and attributed savings to them. It is usually perception driving that conversation. I have pushed back on a few and discovered that the improvements are mainly being requested to satisfy a few high performing piece-work employees and the change will have little if any impact on the normal employee.

So giving choices transforms the decision from technical to business. For example, there could easily be a $5 million per year spread in delivering sub-second response and 5-second response. In the previous case, spending $5 million extra to satisfy a few workers will not recoup the expense any time soon, if ever. The business is better of giving the few high performers a bonus for their productivity and keeping the systems as-is. So by giving choices, you force the analysis and ensure a reasonable option is chosen.

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.

120 Seconds.

Brevity and clarity are extremely important when discussing IT options with business or IT leader. Research shows that many readers have a 2-minute attention span. It doesn’t matter if it is a novel, white paper or report. Most executives fall into that category, mostly in self defense. In that span of time, you need to give them enough information to grab their interest, see the value and want more. If it takes longer than that, your ideas or results stand a good chance of being dismissed. Think about it. A capacity planning manager may have to deal with thousands of devices. It’s hard enough to give the time to keep abreast of those. Think what a senior executive has to deal with when he must keep abreast of all the moving parts in an IT Department or the business as a whole.

There are commonly used methods to stay within the 2-minute span:

1. Use “newspaper headlines” to make your points. Hit them right between the eyes with your points. You want them to listen.
   Only list important items. Executives usually aren’t concerned with things that really don’t matter in the scheme of things. Money and risks are usually the most successful topics that get their attention.
2. Use space wisely; don’t make the page(s) too busy. It detracts from your message; you want them to focus on just a few important points.
3. Try to keep the sentences to 5 words or less. Education research has shown that the mind has more difficulty keeping thoughts in immediate memory when they exceed 7 words in length. Keeping points to 5 words or less ensures thoughts are kept in bite-sized amounts for the reader to consider.

Clear and concise reports will get the readers attention, help get your information across to decision makers, and get them to take the actions you need to sustain service quality.

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.

Consider Your Audience…

Capacity planners share the results of their work with a wide range of audiences, ranging from the very technical to the layperson. It’s part of our job. Because of the differences in understanding, we should not use a one-size-fits-all approach to our reports. This means we may need to develop several versions of a report. One version may be very detailed to satisfy the needs of technical support teams. Another may be very high level so senior executives can understand the importance of your report and what it means to the business.

When developing these different reports and presentations, consider your audience when choosing words. Network technicians will know what you mean by network congestion but that may mean nothing more than a head cold to your business leader. As you write more reports, keep a file of the words that work best for you in different situations. You may also want to keep track of the ones that didn’t work, even though our memory usually reminds us of those.

When presenting in mixed audiences, remember what you learned in elementary school when dealing with fractions – find the least common denominator. Aim for your executives. You may bore those who crave details, but you can always feed them more information at a later date. You usually only get one shot with the executive and they are usually the decision makers.

By tailoring your presentations to your audience, attendees will appreciate the level of understanding they receive and will look forward to future ones. People will pay attention to your work and thus understand its importance.

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.

The Problem with Metrics…

Metrics are our life. We couldn’t perform the work we do without them. The problem is many of the metrics we use are abstract numbers so when we go to present results, we encounter resistance or indifference. Business people don’t understand (or care) about technical metrics they can’t visualize. We can’t take our business leaders down to the computer room and show them a MIP, Quanta or RPerf on the floor. We can’t easily show them in layman’s terms what amount of work is performed by a single MIP. We can’t unplug an Ethernet cable and show them a packet nor show them how many pour out of the end across a given point in time.

I can remember one budget meeting in early December. I was explaining the contents of our proposed capital outlay plan for the ensuing year to the CFO. I mentioned MIPs of capacity, BPS of network bandwidth and megabytes of memory and storage. After I finished, the CFO said “You forgot the partridge in a pear tree.”) At that point it was clear that he did not have a clue as to the importance of those metrics on day-to-day operations of the business. I realized we must change the way we presented technical information to the business.

Since that time, I and my teams have developed ways to help executives visualize IT concepts. For networking, we commonly use picture of multi-lane divided highways with cars representing packets. I have also used examples of the engineering of municipal water and sewer systems to relate to IT infrastructure. Everyone understands those concepts and their past experience with those real-life subjects helps put pictures in their mind. For server-based concepts, we generally slice and dice the data to reflect use per business piece of work, such as cutting a sales order or shipping an average order. I’m sure you can think of many other ways to portray IT infrastructure usage in common terms that your business leaders can easily understand.

The more we can help our decision-makers visualize the work that is performed by our systems and the value of funding future needs to sustain it, the easier it is for them to feel comfortable that their money is well spent and communicate the message to the stockholders. By going the extra mile with our metrics, we build confidence in our work and facilitate reporting and decision-making processes.

Until the next post…

Ron

Do Your Homework!

I know that I sound like your parents when you were in school but you need to do your homework before presenting results to management. We capacity planners are in a position where we need to ask leaders for large sums of money to satisfy the business unit’s IT demand. Our decisions can impact the entire organization and if seriously mistaken, could possibly cause the business to fail. For whatever reason, they may not have had enough experience with our work to have high confidence level with us, so they ask us questions. They want to be sure we have thought of most if not all eventualities. Senior leaders want to ensure we understand all the risks to and impacts on the organization and have selected the best option or options. So it is important that you can quickly provide answers that reveal considerable thought has gone into your plans and requests. Failing to do so will mean they will constantly question the accuracy and validity of your results.

Early on I learned that capacity planning is more than doing trending or knocking out predictive capacity models. After the first couple of executive meetings, I grew tired of being embarrassed because I didn’t have the answers to their questions. I started to look at my work beyond the numbers, trying to think of the impact of different eventualities, both technical and business-related. For us, our work is a collection of mathematical and intuitional exercises. For senior executives, it goes far beyond that, therefore we need to understand those positions and be prepared.

So bottom line, do your homework. Senior leaders will test you to ensure you have thought things through; more at first and less as they gain confidence in you.

Until the next post…

Ron