Monitor the system for performance, operation, and results.
Go back to your plan; what were your goals? You knew you were starting on one side of a gulf, you defined both where you were at the start and where you wanted to be in terms of your NMS. Now, it's time to collect and review metrics to ensure you are meeting your goal(s).
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- Number of tickets opened (by shift, by day of the week, by device type/problem/priority)
- Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)
- Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF); this metric CANNOT be affected by any NMS, as it is defined by the models of devices deployed
- How many Support tickets are you opening with Opmantek?
So, while the number of tickets is an important metric to monitor, the key attribute is the time from ticket open to resolution, or MTTR. Tracking the meantime to resolution will give you the ability to gauge how long the impact is on operations. Aligning this with ticket priority, as a relative measurement of end-customer impact, will provide a three-dimensional reflection of performance improvement.
It is important to note, MTTR is just one metric of several that should be monitored before and after NMS conversion.
Soft Impact
- Change Management; Are departments and individual operators taking ownership of the NMS solution?
- Training Quality; Are users familiar with the solution interface, documentation, and your architecture. Do they know where to go when they have questions?
- User Moral; how are users adapting to the new system; is there a shadow IT solution still in use?
- User Investment;
- Management Support; Is management "on-board" with the new system, is the new NMS supported from the top-down; is user adoption expected and supported
Next Up
Adjust - use your observations as inputs to adjust your Plan