Establish a Program to Enable Effective Performance Monitoring
Maximize the benefits of infrastructure monitoring investments by diagnosing and assessing transaction performance, from network to server to end-user interface.
Onsite Workshop
Ninety-five percent of IT shops do not have full visibility into their production environment. As a result, when performance issues occur organizations struggle to establish a streamlined process to resolve the problem. This can include:
- IT staff are forced to spend the majority of their time troubleshooting and responding to lower value incidents.
- Over- or under-provisioning of capacity due to inability to foresee future capacity requirements from business requirements.
- Immediate customer impact as performance issues cause direct damage to the bottom-line and goodwill.
Effective performance management will allow an organization to:
- Reduce the time spent troubleshooting common performance issues and focus on high-value strategic initiatives.
- Optimize capacity planning and ensure that the business is supported throughout the business cycle.
- Enhance customer satisfaction by reducing disturbances and grief due to downtime.
Module 1: Determine Transaction Criticality
The Purpose
- Determine critical business transactions.
- Establish a scoring criteria to evaluate each transaction at an enterprise-wide level.
- Determine the relative criticality of each transaction.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Prioritized list of critical transactions.
- Identified area of focus for the performance management pilot.
- Documented transaction dependencies.
Activities: | Outputs: | |
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1.1 | Create a project charter for the performance management pilot. |
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1.2 | Determine critical business transactions. |
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1.3 | Establish scoring criteria. |
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1.4 | Analyze and prioritize each transaction. |
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Module 2: Document Infrastructure Flows
The Purpose
- Visualize your production environment through infrastructure flow mapping (IFM) and transaction profiling.
- Kick-start the baseline process by breaking down transaction flows and identifying interdependencies.
- Capture current-state baseline statistics.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Improve clarity around the production environment through IFM and transaction profiling.
- Create a common framework and knowledgebase for all members of the IT team.
- Establish the current-state performance baseline.
Activities: | Outputs: | |
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2.1 | Execute infrastructure flow mapping. |
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2.2 | Execute transaction profiling. |
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2.3 | Capture baseline statistics. |
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Module 3: Leverage Baseline Insights and Plan Next Steps
The Purpose
- Determine additional projects that can benefit from the performance baseline.
- Determine target-state baseline requirements.
- Assess the gap between the current and target performance metrics.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Outline project next steps by leveraging the insights from the performance baseline and documenting them in the Insight Handbook.
- Engage the production team and outline business requirements for the target baseline.
- Determine the current performance gap.
Activities: | Outputs: | |
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3.1 | Document planned next steps in the Insight Handbook. |
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3.2 | Discuss desired-state performance metrics. |
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3.3 | Analyze the gap between current and desired transaction statistics. |
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Module 4: Determine Go/No-Go Decision
The Purpose
- Leverage the gap analysis and determine the go/no-go decision for additional performance management investments.
- Create a business case to justify and demonstrate the benefits of additional performance management.
- Communicate baseline insights and project next steps to management.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Outline project next steps by leveraging the insights from the performance baseline and documenting them in the Insight Handbook.
- Completed business case document to justify the value of performance management.
- Align needs and expectations through the Executive Presentation.
Activities: | Outputs: | |
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4.1 | Complete phase 3 of the Transaction Impact Analysis Tool. |
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4.2 | Complete the business case for additional performance management investments. |
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4.3 | Communicate with all stakeholders regarding baseline insights and project next steps. |
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