May - 2016 - issue > Last Word

GETTING "IT" DONE WITH BI-MODAL APPROACH

Viren Shah

CIO & VP-Masco Cabinetry

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Forward

IT professionals often face dilemmas. And while this is a constant challenge, we aren't alone. It's simply that other business functions have found ways to manage resource supply and demand. In finance, when accounting-related activities create a strain, they scale by hiring external resources temporarily to manage through that equation.

The solution for IT hinges onto identify and manage operating principles of fixed and variable supply and demand has been in existence for centuries. In IT, we can separate our demand into two groups: fixed or Services and variable or Projects. Separating these two important components helps us build a predictable model. Depending on the organization's maturity in the lifecycle, using these techniques can predict IT demand between two to ten percent accuracy.

Services - The Fixed Demand
The Services aspect of IT includes fixed demand and supply. Fixed demand includes infrastructure and services where demand can be easily projected out, resources planned and budgets created accordingly. By using metrics such as incidents, and capacity utilization, we can gauge how many resources, are required.

Projects - The Variable Demand
The Projects aspect includes variable demand and supply. Variable demand house projects that are less defined and have a tendency to evolve as your environment changes or your business plans change. The most volatile demand is the number of developers needed, and in-house personnel are normally absorbed in other projects. Because of the fluid nature of these demands, costs are inclined to increase.