Design and Planning Documentation

Chapter 2, "Planning, Prototyping, Migrating, and Deploying Windows Server 2003 Best Practices," provides a detailed look at the type of documentation needed in the design and planning process. This documentation is extremely important when an organization engages in a new project in that it provides both a historical record of what and how the decisions were made and makes sure that the stakeholders are in agreement.

Documenting the Design

The first step in the implementation of Windows Server 2003 environment is the development and approval of a design. Documenting this design contributes to the success of the project. The design document records the decisions made during the design process and provides a reference for testing, implementation, and support. The key components to a design document include the following:

• The goals and objectives of the project

• The background or what led up to the design

• The approach that will be used to implement the solution

• The details of the end state of the project

Goals and objectives can be surprisingly hard to pin down. They need to be detailed and concrete enough to define the results that you want while staying at a high level. For instance, "reduce downtime" is too vague to be considered a functional goal, whereas "implement server clustering with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition to reduce downtime to less than five minutes in the case of single server failure" is much more specific.

Including the background of meetings and brainstorming sessions that led up to the decisions for the end state of the project provides the groundwork for the detailed designs provided later in the document. For example, a decision may have been made "because the CEO wants it that way," which affects the post-migration environment. Other decisions may have come about after many hours of debates over the particulars and required technical research to come up with the "right" answer. Recording this level of information can be extremely useful in the future if performance issues are encountered or additional changes to the network are being considered.

The description of the end state to be implemented can be very high level or can drill down to more specific configurations of each server, depending on the document's audience. However, it is recommended that the design document not include step-by-step procedures or other details of how the process will be accomplished. This level of detail is better handled, in most cases, in dedicated configuration or training documents as discussed later in this chapter.