3 Things You're Forgetting When It Comes to IT Capacity Management

The value of IT capacity management is vital, but all too often overlooked or under-planned. Companies prioritize the need for immediate technology deployment and neglect the strategic planning needed to support long-term goals and ensure a smooth project from start to finish. This leads to missed opportunities, wasted investments, and projects that fail before they even launch.

By recognizing and understanding the deeper challenges in IT capacity management, businesses can optimize their operations, reduce costs, and stay ahead of the competition.

1. The Cost of Wasted Investments Due to Abandoned Tech Project

According to a recent report, 11.4% of investment is wasted due to poor project performance. This underscores the beginning of IT capacity management issues when a proper plan was never developed. Additionally, companies that undervalue project management say that more than 67% of their projects fail outright. These startling figures highlight the important need for project oversight as well as well-thought-out capacity management.

Many IT projects are stopped due to escalating costs, shifting priorities, or unforeseen complexities beyond the initial scope. This abandonment often leads to significant financial losses, not to mention frustrations across the company. The direct investment in a project that goes awry results in missing opportunities for successful initiatives.

In other words, when you spend on a bad project, you also cost yourself a good one.

To mitigate these risks, companies must plan a strategy early and monitor progress often throughout the project lifecycle.

Initial Feasibility Studies: Conduct thorough evaluations to determine the project's alignment with business objectives and feasibility.
Risk Assessments: Identify potential risks at multiple stages of the project to help avoid issues that might lead to potential issues and setbacks.
Regular Project Reviews: Conduct periodic analyses to gauge progress and for any necessary adjustments to keep the project on course if it deviates from its goals.

Build a strategic plan, and stick to it. This means setting realistic expectations, maintaining clear communication, and preparing yourself to make tough decisions to either pivot, postpone, or stop projects based on the needs. Every decision within the process should be considered and is an area where leveraging external technology consultants can ensure you have an unbiased plan that factors every possible consideration.

2. The Importance of Addressing the Root Problem, Not Just the Symptoms

Beyond the cost risks, another waste is not exploring issues deeply enough. Focusing on short-term fixes without understanding the underlying issues in IT projects is like treating the symptoms of a disease without diagnosing the cause. It offers temporary relief, might even mask the impending issues, but then the problem eventually returns. Companies must go deeper than just addressing surface-level issues.

For example, consider a company that has dealt with multiple projects that fail to transform how employees work. Instead of rolling out yet another project, the company should conduct a comprehensive audit to identify the root cause – be it the initial scope, migrating from legacy systems, on-boarding, training, or deficient internal processes.

Within your own company, start by developing a smart strategy that is tightly aligned with your long-term technology goals. This should not only address the immediate problems but also anticipate future obstacles. Build a solid foundation for what’s coming. Then, when you cut the root, you can build towards pre-determined goals. Be proactive, not reactive.

This benefits the company across multiple facets:

Strategic Consistency: Piecemeal solutions offer no real value. Address the core issues and work towards uniform, long-term solutions.
Cost Efficiency: Solving fundamental problems prevents the wastage of resources on systemic issues.
Quality Improvements: When you fix the root issue, you’re fixing something deep and comprehensive that builds towards future business growth.

“Getting to three possible causes is equally beneficial as compared to getting to one conclusive underlying reason. Understanding possible root causes allows for further analysis and the subsequent investigation that could finally lead to the real reasons behind an incident.”

-Forbes Technology Council

3. The Role of Project Leadership and Change Management

Thinking outside of problem-solving, IT capacity management is about facilitating transitions. After all, technology is constantly evolving. New products. New updates and features. New workflows.

But you can’t just dump new technology into people’s laps. Effective support orchestrates smooth transitions and helps businesses stay competitive. According to the Harvard Business Review, 67% of leaders have experienced “at least one underperforming transformation in the last five years.”

Here are steps to developing a successful project leadership and change management strategy:

Create a Rollout Plan: Define the objective, scope, and milestones of the transformation. Detail what needs to be achieved, outline the phases, and allocate the necessary resources across every team including top leadership. This also needs to consider ongoing support after deployment and how to retire older applications that will no longer be needed.
Conduct Onboarding and Training: Prepare comprehensive training materials and have detailed sessions for all employees impacted by the new technology project. This ensures everyone understands the new workflow, capabilities and expectations.
Implement Continuous Improvement: Establish mechanisms for ongoing feedback to implement additional capabilities and features. Schedule regular updates and performance reviews to adapt and evolve as needed.
Optimize Processes and Costs: Analyze performance data to fine-tune and improve. Make proactive adjustments including ensuring all licenses are properly utilized.

It’s about building new approaches for sustained effectiveness. By doing this, companies avoid the trappings and issues that can be caused when trying to transform technology usage.

CorSource, Your IT Capacity Management Partner

The process enables technology. It’s not the other way around. No matter how advanced or promising your IT infrastructure and applications are, it cannot substitute for strategic and process-driven planning. One poorly planned transition could cause significant damage, impacting both your reputation and your bottom line.

CorSource's technology consulting specifically addresses IT capacity management by going beyond technological deployment and prioritizing strategic planning. By focusing on core issues rather than symptoms, we help companies avoid the high costs of abandoned projects and ineffective quick fixes. Our approach includes comprehensive feasibility studies, risk assessments, and regular project check-ins to ensure alignment with your long-term business goals.

Leverage our expertise to ensure your technology investments are sound, strategic, and capable of delivering the competitive edge you need. Discover how CorSource can help turn pitfalls into platforms for success.