Managing IT Demand 101

CIO — Call them what you want—business systems planners, IT account consultants, IT relationship managers or business technology liaisons—they are responsible for helping ensure that IT demand is balanced with supply. Until recently, I assumed that most of these professionals understood demand management and their role in facilitating a win-win handshake between IT and the business. Surely, we have evolved beyond the order-taking era of IT.

Boy, was I wrong. While facilitating a planning session with a Fortune 50 company, I assumed that the IT account consultants would want to dive deep into demand management issues and opportunities. Instead, while presenting the demand management framework, I received push-back in the form of the question "What right does IT have to tell the business what they can and cannot have?"

I took a deep breath and checked my watch. I had just been transported back to 1994, when conventional wisdom held that IT delivery issues could be fixed with supply-side tactics, such as improved capacity planning and project management, standard software development approaches and alternative sourcing strategies. As I readied myself to shift into coaching mode (and give them a primer on demand management, whether they wanted it or not), my facilitator survival instincts won over, and I let them define their top issues and opportunities. (As you’d expect, they decided to tackle the supply side.)

Well, I’m out of facilitator mode, back into coaching mode and, last I checked, it’s 2004 and well past the time for all IT professionals to have a firm grasp of demand management and its supporting mechanisms. In one of my previous columns, "IT Economics," I defined demand management as allocation of capital and human resources to the highest-value opportunities. Demand management is important because it helps the enterprise get the most out of its scarce resources and allows IT to focus the company agenda and improve delivery.

Evaluate the health of your demand management mechanisms with the following overview of the key mechanisms.

Most of us are familiar with what strategic IT planning should be—even if our actual practice is short of the mark. To grease the wheels of demand management, the strategy-making process needs to result in a finite set of opportunities. You accomplish this by prioritizing based on some type of strategic filter. Once you have worked with business execs to identify the IT-enabled business opportunities, technical types can further manage demand by roughing out the architectural requirements, constraints and standards necessary to minimize the technical footprint.

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