Develop and implement a plan of action
Your action plan typically consists of the following steps:
Develop a plan of action:
- Analyze available data
- Review the documentation
- Build a test environment
- Consider the impact of changes
- Plan for rollback
Implement a plan of action:
- Implement in a test environment
- Consult change management
- Resolve a problem
- Monitor and evaluate a resolution
- Report and document a problem’s resolution
Develop a plan of action
The following table examines the steps involved in developing your plan of action.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Analyze available data | Helps you ensure that you’ve determined the probable cause correctly. |
| Review the documentation | Review any documentation that relates to the fix that you’re planning. |
| Build a test environment | If your proposed fix involves significant reconfiguration work, this might affect the user’s productivity. Consider building a test environment, or using a demonstration tenant to test your proposed fix. |
| Consider the impact of changes | If you must perform significant reconfiguration to resolve problems, these changes might affect many areas of your organization. |
| Plan for rollback | If you implement a fix and it does not resolve the problem as you hoped, you might consider rolling back the fix. |
Implement a plan of action
The following table examines the steps involved in implementing your plan of action.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Implement in a test environment | For complex, organizational-wide problems, implement your plan of action in a test environment, if possible. |
| Consult change management | If your organization uses a change management procedure, you must consult the relevant documentation before you attempt any significant changes. |
| Resolve a problem | Having tested your proposed fix, apply the fix to your production environment. |
| Monitor and evaluate a resolution | If a fix takes time to complete and involves a number of stages, you should monitor its progress. Evaluate the data that you collect during this monitoring process. This can help you determine if the fix is successful or not. |
| Report and document a problem’s resolution | You must document all the steps that you took and then document the results. |
Tip
Keep in mind that the specific stages of your action plan might vary because of a specific problem’s complexities or circumstances.