Building IT Capacity

One of the essential elements to developing a successful IT organization is building and forecasting the infrastructure and services necessary to support the institution's overall goals and objectives. While strategic planning looks at the broader institutional macro-level goals of an organization, capacity planning takes a more granular look at identifying and forecasting the technologies, staffing, and funding necessary to support the institution's strategic vision.
For many IT organizations capacity planning covers a broad cross section of technology projects supporting campus-wide teaching, research, and administrative activities. In addition to responding to internal priorities, IT leaders must also chart capacity according to external drivers such as vendor product schedules, emerging demands for IT skills, and technology adoption curves. This Institute session will introduce the concept of capacity planning and its role in IT organizational development.

Objectives:

• Establish a framework for capacity planning and why developing IT capacity is a fundamental element of IT leadership, change management, and sustainable planning.
• Relate the importance of developing an IT organizational culture of capacity planning with respect to overall campus growth, development, and governance.
• Develop an understanding of the critical role using performance metrics and analytics to guide capacity planning for resource allocation, decision making, and the overall institutional budgetary process.