IT Service Management, 3rd Edition

9 DEMAND MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE

Effective demand management avoids unnecessary spend on capacity and reductions in service levels caused by fluctuations in workload or demand.

As a service provider, IT is responsible for providing just enough capacity for services to meet their agreed service levels. Too much capacity is a wasted cost and too little puts service levels at risk. This is described in detail in the capacity management process (see Chapter 15).

The process of demand management is necessary for two main reasons:

• The arrival rate of work, such as transactions sent to a server, print jobs sent to a printer or calls to a service desk, is not steady. In other words, there are peaks and troughs over the hour and day, as ...