The document discusses capacity and availability management in IT and ITES services. It defines capacity as the maximum amount of service or requests a system can handle, and availability as the degree to which a service is accessible when needed. An example is provided of a call center whose capacity needs to increase to meet growing demand from clients. Good practices for capacity and availability management include periodically predicting demand, planning capacity to meet it, ensuring capacity is provided as planned, and studying the overall system performance.

1. CAPACITY AND AVAILABILITY
MANAGEMENT & TEMPLATE
( IT AND ITES)
Vishnuvarthanan
Moorthy
12 Aug 15

2. CAPACITY AND AVAILABILITY -
DEFINITIONS
Capacity - The degree to which one thing can support, hold,
process, or produce another thing. In the context of services,
capacity can refer to the maximum amount of service delivery
or maximum number of service requests that a service system
can handle successfully within a fixed period of time. (CMMI
SVC v1.3)
Availability - The degree to which something is accessible and
usable when needed. In the context of services, availability can
refer to the set of times, places, and other circumstances in
which services are to be delivered, service requests are to be
honored, or other aspects of a service agreement are to be
valid. Availability is a quality attribute. (CMMI SVC v1.3)

3. CAPACITY AND AVAILABILITY
IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Capacity – How much of the demand (or work arrival) can be met
with the planned service system (people, system, network, etc), and
based on that making improvements to ensure that the deviation is
within threshold.
Capacity to be kept in line with changing demand conditions, however it may not be
possible to increase or decrease capacity for every change and that’s the reason for
keeping the thresholds. A client may be able to see the capacity planning of a service
organization, however an end user may not be.
Availability – How much time the service system is available with
the intended capacity (w.r.t every service system component) and
any drop/downtime shall be improved. Mostly the availability is
measured in terms of time angle.
Any drop in availability would reduce the actual capacity to meet the demand,
temporarily. Hence its important to ensure availability is maintained at high level. A
continued reduced availability may warrant additional service components to increase

4. EXAMPLE OF CAPACITY AND
AVAILABILITY
Assume you are having a call center with 10 people and each can handle 10
calls in an hour. So you are expecting to have 100 calls attended, this is
your initial system ability. Also you have adequate telephone, computing
machine and bandwidth to support these calls. You have 14 hours * 5 days
support a week. Which means that you have an availability defined for
equivalent value.
The business of your client is increased, because of that suddenly you see
200 calls comes in an hour. He has also expanded to multiple countries
which are geographically separated.
Can your 10 people handle 200 calls, what happens to actual demand with
your existing capacity? Can multiple regions are supported by 14*5 call
center or do you want to increase the service window for longer period to
accommodate them? And so many other questions…
Capacity should be Dynamic enough to meet the Demand, if not the
purpose is not served!

5. EXAMPLE OF CAPACITY AND
AVAILABILITY - CONTINUED
Technically you would be increasing your capacity (processing
ability of service system) when the demand increases beyond a
limit. In addition you may continue with same availability level
or when needed you can increase the availability. However you
may not be able to increase it beyond 24*7 (I hope ) for the
service components.
Capacity at the beginning of a given period may be checked
with the planned leaves, planned interruptions, etc and derived
with Net Planned Capacity. This value in most of the cases will
be lesser than the Planned Capacity.
Inflow plays important role in establishing the demand and that
influences the Capacity. Hence its important to predict the
inflow. In smaller organizations, we may just study the trend
and may decide the demand to be met. In this case considering
the demand is increased, the capacity can be designed to meet
the demand. So we may opt to place 20 resources instead of 10
and may increase the capacity of Service Components.

6. CAPACITY AND AVAILABILITY
Actual capacity made available in
any given period- This could be
same as Standard/Planned
Capacity or could be Lower
Demand by Time
Probable Increased
Standard Capacity to
meet Demand
Initial
Planned/Agreed/Stand
ard Capacity to Meet
demandPlanned Capacity in a
given Period –
Excluding Planned
Interruption (can be
more than Standard
Capacity)
Planned Availability
Increased
Availability
Actual Availability
Purpose of capacity is to meet demand & purpose of Availability is to Ensure
Capacity is available all agreed times.

7. MEASURES OF CAPACITY AND
AVAILABILITY
Typically capacity measures are identified with planning aspect,
utilization aspect and ability to meet demand. Similarly availability
measures are identified with planning and ability to meet demand.
Capacity Measures Availability Measures
Planned Capacity % = Net Planned
Capacity/ Planned Capacity
Planned Availability % = Net planned
Availability/ Planned Availability
Capacity Utilization % = Actual
Capacity/Planned Capacity
Planned Availability % = Actual
Availability/ Planned Availability
Capacity Met % = Actual workload
Equivalent/Actual Capacity
NA
In addition, Overall Service System’s Capacity and Availability is
calculated by multiplying all the values of Human and Infra components
with Relevant Weightage.

8. GOOD PRACTICES
 Predict the Demand Periodically
Plan the capacity in alignment with Prediction and actuals observed in the past
Revise the standard Capacity when the periodical planned capacity is
significantly(>10%) higher or lower for a quarter or Half yearly.
Ensure the Planned Capacity is Provided (actual Capacity is same as planned
Capacity)
Ensure Demand Met by your capacity is around 100% in most of the times ( + or –
10%)
Ensure Availability is calculated in Calendar Hours and when multiple
components are involved , you may multiply and compare with actuals.
 Availability should be compared with ensuring, whatever is the planned capacity
for the period.
Study the System Performance Overall and not individually on Infra and Human.
 End of the day, Meeting the Demand in an effective manner with Appropriate
Spending is the Purpose of Capacity and Availability!

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