10 steps to develop an IT Capacity Plan

IT Capacity Plan important points according to ITILIT Capacity Plan important points of an, according to ITIL best best practices

The Capacity Plan is considered one of the main outputs of the IT Capacity Management practices.

Below, I choose some topics that can provide a guide for the manager to prepare a plan of this nature, which is usually produced on an annual frequency, to plan IT resources in order to meet current and future needs required by the business area.

Premises

For the plan to be composed in an assertive way, it is necessary that the following are well defined:

• The Business Activities Standard (PAN), which is one of the main outputs of the demand management practices ;
• The IT Service Portfolio and Catalog;
• The IT Strategic Plan;
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and availability levels  required for services;
• Current information on how business needs consume IT services;
• Other relevant information that should be obtained at the beginning of the service design stage, such as Business Impact Analysis for IT services and risk analysis.

All this information will be needed as inputs in capacity planning and the lack of it will make the Capacity Manager work intuitively.

10teps to prepare the Capacity Plan

1. Define the scope of your plan - Ideally, the capacity plan should be designed for all the elements that make up IT service management, which ITIL 4 calls the four dimensions: 1. Organization and People, 2. Information and Technology, 3. Partners and Suppliers and 4. Value Streams and Processes. Record the scope of your plan, seeking to cover these four items.
2. Use the Business Activity Pattern to predict Business (BAP) capability - The BAP is one of the main inputs in the Capacity Manager's view. In this tool, the activities of the business processes that will be supported by the IT services are described and decomposed, including frequency, load, and other forecasts. By reading and understanding this information, it will be possible to conclude in what exactly the business area will need to be supported. Define the topics you think are necessary, using the timescale appropriate to your business area: per day/per month/per hour. Ex(s): -One million sales per month, with an increase of 70% at the end of the year; -One thousand five hundred new employees in the first quarter; -Ten thousand processes updated per day; -15 thousand new registrations.
3. Use information about current resource usage. - Monitoring the utilization of current IT resources is essential to provide insight into how business activities consume IT services. Through the analysis of current consumption, it is possible to identify, for example, how many services are demanded for IT, each time a new employee is hired by the company, or how much IT resources are needed for every 1,000 students enrolled in a university.
4. Use other information produced in the Service Strategy practices. - The IT Strategic Plan, the forecast of new or modified services and financial resources are essential for the preparation of the next steps of the Plan.
5. Plan the capacity of IT services - List the services that will support the Business Capacity Plan produced in item 01. Quantify and specify when they will be used, including required performance, Operational Level Agreements they must support, and other necessary requirements. To serve 01,000 enrollments per day, for example, the enrollment system must allow "N" simultaneous transactions, response time "x", and incident resolution within a maximum period of "Y" minutes/hours. In another fictitious example, let's say that the technology area predicts the registration of one thousand new employees in the network access management tool and an average of "N" new monthly calls to IT from the moment these new employees are working for the company. Realize that the information from the previous topics is essential for the Capacity Manager to arrive at these forecasts.
6. Plan the capacity of the IT components. - This is the time when the capacity manager gets to the most detailed level of his plan. This defines not only the required capacity in hardware and software, but also in terms of people, processes, and outsourcing. The objective is to define the IT components that are necessary to maintain the services according to the needs foreseen in item 4., justifying each forecast. In a fictitious example, let's say each service technician can resolve 200 calls per month; this means that 05 technicians would be needed for a forecast of 1 thousand calls, recorded in the Service Capacity Planning (item 4). This same reasoning should be used for equipment, tools, training needs, and other predictions.
7. Document assumptions - It's important to document assumptions so that your capacity plan meets business needs. The assertiveness of demand management forecasts is an example of a premise for you, as a capacity manager, to build an efficient and effective plan.
8. Define the risks - For the capacity plan forecasts, there are risks. List which risks the business/services area and IT components will be subjected to and which risks will be mitigated and how.
9. Define cost forecasts, with the support of IT Financial Management - After completing this planning, it is interesting to use the best practices defined by the financial management process to include a budget in this document. The cost forecast will serve as a reference for this manager to keep the balance of costs x needs well balanced.
10. Options for improvement - Draw up a list of suggestions for improvement to the IT structure, including hiring, replacing services, components, or adaptations to them.