Ensuring that there is enough operational capacity to deliver their services is a challenge that many organizations face. Operational capacity includes the need for facilities, people, products, licenses, computers, telephones, network bandwidth, parking spots or anything else that you might not have enough during periods of high demand. Some organizations struggle to maintain enough capacity during times of normal demand.
In my consulting work, people ask me all the time questions about how to “right size” their capacity needs, or, how much excess capacity should they plan to have?
Capacity is important but they are asking the wrong question. Rather than ask how to guess how much will be enough, or how much extra to have on hand just in case and then fight for a budget without knowing how to justify more, the focus should be on how the capacity is being used, and why the capacity is needed in the first place. A better question is “how do we predict demand?”
