Some of the them are mentioned below:
- Services may be required to be delivered against an agreed scope in the agreed service window and that too only on demand
- Some members of the service team will be actively utilized by being engaged in working on open tickets while some of the team members may always remain on stand-by, waiting for the next set of tickets
In the services context, there are two essential asks:
- First, ensure service is somehow delivered in line with the agreed scope and the business is somehow kept running and doesn't come to a halt or experience slow down. Service delivery is the key focus area for taking care of this.
- And second, ensure service is not only somehow delivered but delivered in line with agreed expectations and the business is not only somehow kept running but made to run effectively and efficiently. Service level management is the key focus area for taking care of this.
Team capacity planning deals with estimating the following:
- How many team members in all are required for delivering a service?
- How many shifts are required and how many team members in each shift?
- How many team members are required on weekdays and on weekends?
- How many team members are required temporarily to take care of seasonality? When?
Against the above backdrop, where does team capacity planning fit in?
Simply speaking, team capacity planning is finding the required team size at that time.
Required team size is a function of ticket volume, team size and service performance.
The required team size is in some sense is also the optimal team size.
It is important to maintain optimal team size such that the cost is as low as possible and service performance is as high as possible.
Optimal team size can be viewed as the minimum team size which will ensure service performance will meet the service level agreement (SLA).
The core idea is that 1 member less than the optimal team size will adversely impact service performance such that it will not be able to meet the SLA.
Ticket volume, team size and service performance data should be collected and analysed at some selected periodicity like weekly basis or monthly basis.
Ticket volume is simply how many tickets are received.
Team size is simply how many team members are deployed for providing the service.
Service performance is the more intricate one and requires deeper understanding of the following performance parameters:
- Effort taken to resolve tickets (average as well as its distribution)
- Calendar time taken to respond to tickets (average as well as its distribution)
- Calendar time taken to resolve tickets (average as well as its distribution)
- Comparison of calendar time taken to respond to ticket against the SLA
- Comparison of calendar time taken to resolve ticket against the SLA (which may be defined priority-wise or some other basis like gold, silver, etc.)
- Computation of SLA compliance for time to respond
- Computation of SLA compliance for time to resolve
- Determine the volume of tickets (average as well as its distribution) that is received
- Compute the adjusted volume of tickets received by the team by considering the variation in the technical nature and complexity of the tickets received
- Determine the actual team size (average as well as its distribution) deployed in the team to handle the adjusted volume of tickets received
- Compute the adjusted team size by considering the variation in competency of experienced team members versus freshers versus others
- Determine the actual service performance of the deployed team in handing the adjusted volume of tickets received
- Reconcile the adjusted volume, adjusted team size and actual service performance to see whether adjusted team size is less than required or more
- Arrive at the capacity in terms of required team size based on above steps
- If the required team size is more than the actual and adjusted team size, then there is a buffer and in case the customer of the service notices that, it can lead to team downsizing
- If the required team size is less than the actual and adjusted team size, then there is a deficit and it should be brought intelligently to the attention of the customer of the service for team augmentation
Reconciliation is the more important and involved step in the approach above and should be done using the following rules of thumb:
- Total effort available with the team based on adjusted team size and considering leaves, etc. of team members should be more than the total effort required for the team based on adjusted ticket volume and effort taken to resolve one ticket
- Effort taken to resolve one ticket should be less than effort derived from calendar time taken to resolve one ticket (calendar time multiplied by number of working hours in that calendar duration gives the effort derived from calendar time)
- On an average basis, the volume of tickets received in a certain time duration should be less than volume of tickets resolved in the same duration
For studying the ticket volume and service performance one can start with simple statistical tools like trend of average and standard deviation.
As is required, and as is possible based on competency available, one can explore advanced methods like queuing theory for the above purpose.
