A compelling statistic emerged from the 2016 Resource Management and Capacity Planning benchmark study. Of organizations that considered themselves lower maturity when it comes to capacity planning, only 31% typically even consider capacity when deciding to take on new projects. In stark contrast, 72% of mature companies consider capacity most or all of the time.
Men vilka fördelar har den sistnämnda gruppen av kunder genom att ha möjlighet att bedöma kapaciteten när de granskar den inkommande efterfrågan? Det visar sig att det finns många positiva resultat av att förstå resurskapaciteten. Jag har lyft fram 5 viktiga fördelar som rapporterats av organisationer som har införlivat en rimlig förståelse av resurskapaciteten i sin projektintagsprocess.
(For a better understanding of what capacity planning actually involves, see my earlier post, What is Resource Management and Capacity Planning and Why Should You Care?)
- Större flexibilitet i verksamheten - När prioriteringarna plötsligt måste ändras för att möta nya behov kan du fatta bättre informerade beslut om vilka nyckelroller som krävs och vilken kapacitet du har för att fylla dem, vilket gör att du kan fatta mer välgrundade beslut om avvägningar och schemaläggning. Det är trots allt svårt att flytta runt resurser om du inte har en tydlig bild av vilka personer som är tillgängliga, vilken kapacitet de har att ta på sig nya arbetsuppgifter eller vad de arbetar med som kanske kan omplaneras.
- A Proactive Staffing Strategy – Understanding your organization’s capacity at a role level, as compared with the needs of the demand pipeline, allows you to proactively set a staffing strategy that may include adding skills, hiring contractors, offshoring certain activities, bringing in interns, hiring more staff, or any number of actions that can assure effective execution of organizational strategies.
- Fewer Firefights and Less Burnout – When your people’s capacity to take on new work is considered and work is scheduled accordingly, the obvious result is fewer firefights, less overload, and more productive, satisfied resources. While change is inevitable, work can be more planful—even emergent work. It’s a simple fact that continued, excessive overtime reduces productivity and increases stress and turnover. To this end, a little bit of planning can go a long way.
- More Reliable Project Schedules – In today’s dynamic and agile world, project schedules must be fluid and adaptable. But that doesn’t excuse one from planning. On the contrary, planning is necessary even for Agile work, and that includes planning and replanning based on available capacity. This will ensure that the current project schedule is fully capacitized and thus more reliable. In contrast, planning to infinite capacity is like spinning the roulette wheel—if you hit your mark, it’ll be mostly by accident.
- The Ability to Innovate – Being able to quickly evaluate capacity to take on new innovation projects is crucial. According to the 2016 Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study, 71% of IT leaders at higher maturity organizations are able to respond to innovation opportunities in hours or days instead of weeks or months. One participant who successfully undertook capacity planning, a senior manager with a leading consumer products company, reported going from eight weeks to only two or three days on average to evaluate capacity to take on new projects. Indeed, innovation at speed is a clear business advantage. Likewise, the ability to assess capacity to plan for innovation projects in the portfolio is just as vital.
Det borde vara klart vid det här laget att dessa fem stora fördelar tillsammans leder till en bättre kundupplevelse, en mer positiv arbetsmiljö och en större förmåga att genomföra strategier. Det är inte alls långsökt att tillägga att insyn i kapaciteten faktiskt är en nyckelfaktor för smidighet och innovation - en verklig differentieringsfaktor i dagens värld.
If understanding resource capacity is something that is important to your organization, check out the steps to get there, download the guidebook, “Creating IT Capacity to Transform Business.”
