Process Analysis

The final step of conducting your audit is process analysis. Process analysis means learning the various processes used to design, maintain, and troubleshoot the network. By understanding how things get done in your organization, you will be able to more effectively make process changes to help document your network.

Specifically relevant to this chapter, the following will help determine how effectively you can maintain the information gathering:

• Is there a change control process? If so, is it adhered to?

• How does each form of documentation get updated?

• How does a fault get created and tracked?

• How are the causes of outages determined and documented?

• How is customer satisfaction tracked?

The study of organizational processes is not for the faint of heart. There are plenty of resources and consultants available to assist you with this process. Kornel Terplan provides an excellent discussion on process analysis for a network management organization in Benchmarking for Effective Network Management (see "References").