<<Project Name>>

Capacity Plan

Customer Name

Directions for using template:

Read the Guidance (Arial blue font in brackets) to understand the information that should be placed in each section of this template. Then delete the Guidance and replace the placeholder within <<Begin text here>> with your response. There may be additional Guidance in the Appendix of some documents, which should also be deleted once it has been used.

Some templates have four levels of headings. They are not indented, but can be differentiated by font type and size:

Heading 1 – Arial Bold 16 font
Heading 2 – Arial Bold Italic 14 font
Heading 3 – Arial Bold 13 font
Heading 3 – Arial Bold Italic 12 font

You may elect to indent sections for readability.

Author
Author Position
Date

Version: 1.0

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Microsoft and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft in the United States and/or other countries.

Revision & Sign-off Sheet

Change Record

Date	Author	Version	Change Reference

Reviewers

Name	Version Approved	Position	Date

Distribution

Name	Position

Document Properties

Item	Details
Document Title	Capacity Plan
Author
Creation Date
Last Updated

Description: The Capacity Plan outlines the strategy for 1) assessing overall solution and component performance and 2) using this information to develop the plan for component acquisition, configuration, and upgrade.

Justification: Planning for capacity ensures that the business requirements are efficiently and effectively met by the infrastructure and application elements of the solution. It provides management with (1) a clear statement of the capacities of all the resources and services required to operate the solution, (2) an assessment of current capacities, (3) a list of resources and services to be upgraded and to be acquired, and (4) a projection of resource and services capacities required by the solution in the future.

{Team Role Primary: Program Management is responsible for ensuring that the plan is completed and has acceptable quality, as well as incorporating it into the Master Project Plan and Operations Plan; Development provides content to the plan in its responsibility for ensuring that the solution will scale to meet capacity requirements.

Team Role Secondary: All other roles are responsible for reviewing the plan’s content to ensure it satisfies the requirements for their functional area.}]

Summary

Justification: Some project participants may need to know only the highlights of the plan, and summarizing creates that user view. It also enables the full reader to know the essence of the document before they examine the details.]

Objectives

[Description: The Objectives section describes the key objectives of the capacity management process. This information may be derived from information about the current operational environment as well as business requirements and functional specifications.

Justification: Identifying the objectives signals to the customer that Microsoft has carefully considered the present operational situation, the business requirements, and the solution and created an appropriate capacity management approach.]

User Profile

[Description: User profiles describe users of a proposed solution and certain important user characteristics such as frequency of solution use and competence in using a solution. Users can be identified in groups (or classes), usually stated in terms of their functional areas. Information technology users include help desk, database administration, etc. Business users include accounting, warehousing, procurement, etc.

Justification: Describing the users and their important characteristics assists in forming the scenarios that are relevant to capacity.]

Usage Scenarios

[Description: Usage scenarios (also called use cases) define the sequences of tasks users perform and their interactions with solution functions to help them to perform the tasks. This section should define the scenarios performed by the users in each functional area.

Justification: Identifying and describing uage scenarios provides details that enable the estimation of capacity loads and other factors.]

Scenario 1

[Description: The Scenario 1 section describes a scenario and its characteristics that provide input to estimating loads, growth, and impacts.]

Scenario 2

[Description: The Scenario 2 section describes a scenario and its characteristics that provide input to estimating loads, growth, and impacts.]

Task – Load Matrix

[Description: The Task – Load Matrix illustrates the different kinds of loads that each usage scenario places on the system. Measure for both server and client configurations as appropriate to the capacity-planning scenario.]

Scenario Load	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3	Scenario 4	Scenario 5
Hard Drive
RAM
Transactions
Bandwidth
CPU
Printers (by type)
Scanners
Interfacing systems
Software
Other

Expected Growth

[Description: The Expected Growth section describes the growth pattern for the scenarios as a function of time.]

[Description: The Network Traffic Impact section estimates the impact of the solution on network traffic including volume, type, and pattern (time of day, seasonal, etc).]

System Reserves

[Description: The System Reserves section defines the reserve capacity of all system components required by the solution including networking, servers, clients, and applications.]

Component Capacity

[Description: The Component Capacity section identifies the solution’s components (human, equipment, software, facilities, etc.) and defines the components’ current capacities. You may record this information in a table that establishes the breakdown of the solution’s various functional components and records relevant measurement parameters for the system’s known capacity limits.]

Function Areas	Components	Configuration	Measurement	Capacity	Comments
Data transmission links
LAN
WAN
Protocols and transport
Operating systems
Hardware
Application software
Domain/Site models

Bottlenecks

[Description: The Bottlenecks section identifies and describes any areas of the solution that may represent functional bottlenecks.]

Growth and Intervention Strategy

[Description: The growth and Intervention Strategy section describes the manner in which the solution is envisioned to add additional capacity such as:

Monitoring and Metrics

[Description: The Monitoring and Metrics section describes the monitoring methods, techniques, and tools that will be used to evaluate solution and component performance and provides metrics for planning intervention. This information should be provided for each major component at the solution level.]

Total Solution

Component 1

Component 2

Thresholds for Intervention

[Description: The Thresholds for Intervention section identifies, describes, and quantifies thresholds for triggering intervention by changing component configuration.]

Intervention Plan

[Description: The Intervention Plan section describes specific plans to follow in order to preserve performance. This may include details such as network traffic impact, volume, type, pattern (time of day, seasonal, etc), impact on users, system reserves, networking, servers, clients, applications, monitoring, projection of use, thresholds, improvement strategy (e.g. incremental vs. replacement), and prioritization.]