Chapter 6. Defining Your Directory Needs

• Overview of the Directory Needs Definition Process

• Analyzing Your Environment

• Determining and Prioritizing Application Needs

• Determining and Prioritizing Users' Needs and Expectations

• Determining and Prioritizing Deployment Constraints

• Determining and Prioritizing Other Environmental Constraints

• Choosing an Overall Directory Design and Deployment Approach

• Setting Some Goals and Milestones

• Defining Your Directory Needs Checklist

• Further Reading

• Looking Ahead

Directory needs encompass all the reasons for designing and deploying a directory service. Before beginning work on any task, it is a good idea to understand why you're working on it and what you hope to accomplish. Ask yourself why you decided to deploy a directory service. These are some possible answers:

• To support a few important directory-enabled applications

• To save money by consolidating a multitude of proprietary directories into one standards-based service ”that is, to solve the N+1 directory problem described in Chapter 1, Directory Services Overview and History

• To help system administrators manage information with less effort and greater automation

• To make it easier for end users to locate resources within your organization

No matter what the initial impetus, your directory service ultimately must serve the needs of applications and people, and it should be designed with those needs in mind. Your design will likely be evaluated on the basis of how well it serves these needs; therefore, it is important to understand the needs up front.

It is also important to choose a directory design and deployment approach that fits your situation and your philosophy. A variety of organizational and environmental constraints, along with the preferences of the design and deployment team itself, determine what approach works best. A successful approach also balances short- term needs with the need to lay a good foundation for future use of the directory service.

This chapter helps you gather and organize information on all the different needs and constraints that affect the design of your directory service. After working through the material in this chapter, you should be able to produce a good first draft of a directory requirements document. You will also be able to begin to form a project plan for your directory design and deployment effort.

Experienced project managers will find much of the general material presented in this chapter to be familiar. We begin with an overview of the needs definition process, and then we explore each part of this process in detail in the rest of the chapter.