ISO 20000 Capacity Management Process Template

Dec 14, 2023by Maya G

What is Capacity Management Process?

Capacity management is one of the critical areas of service management as defined in the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. The standard describes capacity management as "the process responsible for establishing, maintaining, and improving the plans that define the future capacity requirements of the services and the information systems that support them.”

Capacity Management Process


To ensure that the service provider can meet the future capacity requirements of the services, capacity management must consider several factors, including:
- The projected growth of the services
- The projected growth of the user population
- The projected growth of the workload
- The impact of new technologies
- The impact of changes to the service delivery model
- The impact of changes to the business environment.

Purpose of Capacity Management

The purpose of capacity management is to ensure that the IT service provider's capacity can deliver the required level of services to the customers and meet the future needs of the business.
Capacity management is a proactive process that monitors and manages the available capacity of the IT infrastructure, services, and people. The goal of capacity management is to ensure that the IT infrastructure can support the required level of service agreements and meet the future needs of the business.
Capacity management is divided into four distinct but related sub-processes:
1. Service Capacity Management
2. Component Capacity Management
3. Infrastructure Capacity Management
4. Resource Capacity Management
Service Capacity Management ensures that the capacity of the IT service provider can deliver the required level of services to the customers.
Component Capacity Management ensures that the capacity of the IT service provider's components can meet the required level of service.
Infrastructure Capacity Management ensures that the IT infrastructure's capacity can support the required level of service.
Resource Capacity Management ensures that the capacity of the people and other resources can support the required level of service.

Objectives of Capacity Management

There are four main objectives of capacity management:
1. To ensure that the capacity of the IT infrastructure can meet the current and future needs of the business
2. To identify and avoid potential capacity-related problems
3. To improve the utilization of resources
4. To minimize the cost of the IT infrastructure
Capacity management is an ongoing process that should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the IT infrastructure can meet the ever-changing demands of the business.

Principles and Basic Concepts of Capacity Management

To do this, capacity management must consider the technical and non-technical factors affecting service capacity.
There are four principles of capacity management laid out in iso 20000:
1. Capacity management should be proactive
2. Capacity management should be integrated with other service management processes
3. Capacity management should be based on collaboration between different parties
4. Capacity management should be an ongoing process
These principles are further elaborated upon in the iso 20000 standard itself.

As far as the basic concepts of capacity management go, iso 20000 defines three key terms:

1. Service capacity: The maximum amount of work a service can handle, as defined by the Service Level Agreement (SLA)

2. Level of capacity: The actual amount of work a service can handle at any given time.

3. Utilization: The percentage of service capacity used at a given time.

Capacity management is concerned with both the current and future levels of capacity. To plan for future capacity needs, capacity management must consider factors such as growth in demand for services, changes in technology, and planned changes to the business.

Capacity Management Process

ISO 20000,  iso 20000 Templates
Capacity Management Process

Capacity management is a critical process in ISO 20000 and is responsible for ensuring that service capacity meets the current and future needs of the business.

The process includes four key activities:

  1. Service capacity planning
  2. Service level management
  3. Performance management
  4. Demand management

Each of these activities is important and must be coordinated to ensure that service capacity is effectively managed.

1. Service Capacity Planning

Service capacity planning is the process of identifying the capacity requirements of the services in order to meet the agreed service levels.
This involves understanding the future demand for services and ensuring that the necessary capacity is available to meet this demand.

2. Service Level Management

Service level management ensures that the agreed service levels are met.
This involves defining the service levels that need to be met, measuring actual service levels, and taking action to improve service levels where necessary.

3. Performance Management

Performance management is responsible for monitoring and managing the performance of the services.
This includes monitoring key performance indicators, identifying and investigating performance issues, and taking action to improve performance.

4. Demand Management

Demand management is responsible for forecasting future demand for services and ensuring that this demand is managed in line with the capacity of the services.
This includes understanding the business requirements for services, analyzing trends in service demand, and taking action to encourage them.

iso 20000, ISO 20000 Implementation Toolkit