Use your observations as inputs to adjust your Plan
The first thing you should notice about the Adjust step is that it leads right back into Research. That's right, this is a circular process. The concept here is to take what you have learned from your Observations, adjust your expectations, and set higher goals. Just because your last NMS only took you to X, doesn't mean you can't reach for Y or Z.
The Observation step generally takes 90-120 days in order to allow users to absorb the training, adopt new processes, and begin leveraging the information to improve the performance and reliability of the network. Once this data is captured it can be analyzed in order to determine if the original goals outline in Research have been met, which if any need to be adjusted, and what new goals might be achieved in the next round of improvements.
- Review your goals from the Research step; are there observations available to support or substantiate you have achieved each of the goals?
- If you do not have metrics to substantiate each goal return to the Observe step and adjust your metrics collection
- If your observations cannot support the achievement of a goal, do they suggest what needs to be changed?
- Do you need to gather different metrics, adjust the goal or expectation?
- Do you have access to all the solutions you need in order to meet the goal (i.e. is more licensing required)?
- If you have met each of your goals what is the next step for you? In Research we described the crawl→walk→run adoption methodology; what's the next step for your organization?
- Gather these notes regarding your Observations and use these to fee into a new implementation of the Research step.
- You need not run this process non-stop. Many organizations do it just once or twice a year, essentially extending the Observation step to gather longer metrics and give their teams more time to absorb the product line and make improvements to processes.