BusinessForward

By Josh Scott, Client Executive, BusinessForward

There was a great article in Fast Company some time ago entitled, “How Always Being Busy Makes You Dumber” . I stumbled upon it when I actually carved out snapshot of time during a crazy week. Let’s just say I saw a lot of myself in there. And, while our customers certainly aren’t dumb, they frequently make the avoidable mistake of being so busy there is literally no capacity to think about how not to be at full capacity.

This is especially true of IT organizations. It is precisely the vicious cycle that it sounds like. Whether it’s in a $6 billion retail company or a rapidly expanding energy corporation, because they lack the very thing they are trying to find, they are not making the best decisions. It’s kind of like grocery shopping while hungry. You tend to buy foods that will fill you up immediately, but leave you hungrier an hour later.

It does not have to be this way though. Just like menu planning to avoid binging, IT organizations can use capacity planning to avoid living in the moment. This is where an IT organization assessment solution hits the spot. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on many of projects where we’ve helped scores of companies find the breathing room they need to do more, and do it better.

Start With Process

There is little use in capacity planning around inefficient processes and so it’s vital to identify and implement consistent and scalable processes within your teams. Ask the following questions first:

• Are we doing things “the way we’ve always done it” or have we continually improved over time?
• How much time does our team spend on slow, manual tasks?
• How often does the same task have to happen multiple times because it isn’t right the first time?
• How are communication breakdowns impacting our ability to deliver?

These answers will save time right off the top.

Wait, You’re Doing What?

Once your processes are in order, the next step is to build a sound foundation of information to act as a baseline to measure against. Have you ever done an analysis of how your people are spending their time? Leaders are often amazed at these findings, including any discoveries about how they spend their time.

In the best case scenario, folks are tracking their time accurately within timesheets and you’re able to quickly pull a report and see who’s doing what. More often than not, this is not actually being captured, so building this big picture takes some work.

There are really just two ways to pull together a view of time allocation. You’ll piece together information from a variety of different sources to figure out where time is spent. Or you’ll work with each team member over the course of a prescribed period to document time and build the analysis from scratch. At the end of this process, you are left with a solid understanding of how time is spent within your organization and the ability to measure capacity moving forward.

How Can We Make This Better?

Now comes the fun part. How are the process improvements going to positively impact your capacity? It’s an equation. We pit the estimated time savings from our process analysis against your current capacity metrics and determine what your resource levels will look like once everyone is getting the max use out of their day.

A simple example: You may have 50 people in your organization, but now considering the cleaned up processes, you may only need 40 people to do the same amount of work. This means an extra 10 people to devote to new activities and get more done!

What Does This Look Like In 5 Years?

The final piece of the puzzle is working with strategic decision makers to project what your business will do over the next one, three, or five years. Based on these, we are able to proactively project what your capacity might very well look like in the future. The goal is to have an even distribution of tasks and a clear understanding of who does what and how that is all aligned with the objectives of serving your customers.

Truly taking the time to understand your organization’s capacity allows you to plan, budget, and hire accordingly. And while that may be as obvious as eating protein instead of fat when you are hungry, when you are starved for time, it’s not so easy. But it can and should be done.