Nationwide formalizes capacity management

An IT insider recounts cross-company effort to create a process model.

In January 2004, I was selected as process developer for Nationwide Financial in a cross-company Information Technology Service Management project for capacity management.

ITSM is a process-based framework for managing IT services. My responsibility as the process developer for Nationwide Financial was to work with process developers from Nationwide Services Co. and Nationwide Property and Casualty to develop an enterprisewide capacity-management process.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the de facto standard in IT service management worldwide, defines capacity management as "the process for ensuring that IT infrastructure capacity matches the evolving demands of the business in the most cost-effective and timely manner."

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In January 2004, I was selected as process developer for Nationwide Financial in a cross-company Information Technology Service Management project for capacity management.

ITSM is a process-based framework for managing IT services. My responsibility as the process developer for Nationwide Financial was to work with process developers from Nationwide Services Co. and Nationwide Property and Casualty to develop an enterprisewide capacity-management process.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the de facto standard in IT service management worldwide, defines capacity management as "the process for ensuring that IT infrastructure capacity matches the evolving demands of the business in the most cost-effective and timely manner."

The most attractive aspect of this project was the opportunity it provided to create a common language that would be accepted and used by three organizations within the same company. To achieve this, the process developers compiled the best practices they had in common and applied them to each participating organization.At a high level a project like this would add value by accomplishing these goals:

• Promoting a common awareness and understanding of capacity management.
• Improving communication.
• Improving current practices.
• Creating and retaining valuable information.
• Developing repeatable processes.
• Reducing capacity costs.

Having considered these potential benefits, the project should easily sell itself and add value for the entire enterprise. The team included three process developers, a process architect, a technical writer, a project manager, a program manager and a project sponsor.

Click to see: Ken Clark, Nationwide

To remain consistent with previous ITSM processes, the capacity-management approach to be developed would comply with the standards of ITIL.

With this directive, the capacity-management process was developed to apply to all three Nationwide participants. That proprietary model depicts how information flows through the primary and non-primary capacity-management processes. In addition, the model depicts the output of the process and shows how constant communication is built into the flow.

After the process model was approved, the next step was to develop procedures for each activity in it. Although input from the three Nationwide organizations differed at times, the group had to keep in mind that it needed to retain current best practices as well as maintain ITIL compliance in developing the procedures. To do this, we conducted a current-state analysis with practitioners in each Nationwide organization. Practitioners are generally individuals at the specialist or consultant level who monitor and handle daily activities related to capacity management.

To prepare for this analysis, the team distributed a questionnaire to the target application areas with the goal of identifying capacity-related best practices and incorporating them into the process.

The development team found that all three organizations had a common approach to capacity management: It was usually addressed after something had broken or a threshold had been exceeded, events that frequently resulted from practitioners not being informed in a timely matter about new capacity needs created by the addition of equipment. There also were no signs of proactive problem management. Both situations communicated the need for a formal capacity-management process.