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- Managing Network Design and Implementation
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- Describe the elements and benefits of project management
- Analyze the current status of a network
- Perform a needs assessment and recommend changes based on your findings
- Manage a network implementation project
- Design and test a pilot network
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- Project management
- Practice of managing resources, staff, budget, timelines and other
variables so as to achieve a specific goal within given bounds
- A project plan is the way in which details of a managed project are
organized
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- Task breakdown
- Dependencies
- Tasks that must be completed before other tasks can begin are called predecessors
- Timeline
- A Gantt chart is a method for depicting when projects begin and end
along a horizontal timeline
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- Resources
- Staffing, materials, and money that a project requires
- The owner of a task it the person/group of people responsible for
completing that task
- Milestones
- Reference point that marks the completion of a major task or group of
tasks in the project and contributes to measuring the project’s
progress
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- Project participants
- A sponsor is a person in a position of authority who supports a project
- A stakeholder is any person who may be affected by the project
- Funding
- Every project—whether it entails a simple hardware upgrade or an entire
network redesign—requires funding
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- Critical purposes for communications:
- To ensure a project’s goals are understood by participants,
stakeholders, and sponsors
- To keep a project’s timeline and budget on track
- To encourage teamwork among participants
- To allow you to learn from previous mistakes
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- Critical purposes for communications (cont.):
- To prevent finger pointing if a task is not completed correctly or on
time
- To avoid duplication of efforts
- To prepare stakeholders for the effects of change
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- Process management
- Planning for handling the steps needed to accomplish a goal in a
systematic way
- Contingency planning
- Process of identifying steps that will minimize the risk of unforeseen
events that endanger the quality or timeliness of the project’s goals
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- Measures to help a network project’s implementation:
- Order more hardware components than you think you need
- Ensure that your hardware and software vendors have extra components on
hand
- Document each piece of hardware and software that you order for a
project
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- Measures to help a network project’s implementation (cont.):
- Rely on a pilot network to test your project’s goals
- If the technology required to implement the project’s is new to project
participants, ask a consulting company to be available for assistance
or questions if needed
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- A test plan should address the following questions:
- Was the change nominally successful?
- Did the change fully accomplish its purpose?
- If the change did not fully accomplish its purpose, did it partially
accomplish its goal?
- Did the change result in unexpected consequences?
- Did the change point to a need for additional changes?
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- Significant steps in implementation process:
- Determine whether the proposed change is feasible
- If deemed feasible, identify the specific goals for a project
- Assess the current state of the network
- Assess the requirements as expressed by stakeholders
- Create a project plan that includes tasks and subtasks, dependencies,
resource allocations, timeliness, and milestones
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- Significant steps in implementation process (cont.):
- If possible, build a pilot network based on your recommendations
- If the pilot network shows promise, begin to implement changes on a
larger scale
- If possible, release changes to a hand-picked group of users to
evaluate the success of your network changes
- If the evaluation indicates the changes were successful, release the
changes to all users
- Update network baseline documentation
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- Feasibility study
- Outlines the cost and benefits of the project and attempts to predict
whether it will result in a favorable outcome
- Setting project goals
- Once deemed feasible, a project team should define a project’s goals
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- Details to address as part of a baseline assessment:
- Physical issues
- Logical topology
- Protocols
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- Details to address as part of a baseline assessment (cont.):
- Devices
- Operating systems
- Applications
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- A needs assessment is the process of clarifying the reasons and
objectives underlying a proposed change
- Possible questions to ask in a needs assessment:
- Is the expressed need valid, or does it mask a different need?
- Can the need be resolved?
- Is the need important enough to allocate resources to its resolution?
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- Possible questions to ask in a needs assessment (cont.):
- If fulfilled, will the need result in additional needs?
- Will fulfilling the needs satisfy other needs?
- Do users affected by the need agree that change is a good measure?
- What kind of resolution will satisfy them?
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- Questions to ask when addressing user requirements:
- What do you need?
- What makes you think this need should be addressed?
- How quickly do you think this need must be addressed?
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- Questions to ask when addressing user requirements (cont.):
- Can you suggest at least three ways we can meet this need?
- What kind of priority would you place on this need?
- Are you willing to ignore other needs to have this need met?
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- Questions to ask when addressing performance requirements:
- Where do current performance bottlenecks exist?
- Why do they exist there?
- What kind of performance is optimal?
- Compared with other projects, what priority would you assign to
improving network performance?
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- Questions to ask when addressing performance requirements (cont.):
- What measures can bring current performance levels to your recommended
level?
- How will performance improvements affect access, availability, customer
needs, security, and scalability?
- How will you ensure that measures taken to improve performance are
successful?
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- Questions to ask technical staff when clarifying their availability
requirements:
- Where do current availability flaws or vulnerabilities exist?
- Where are the network’s single points of failure?
- What kind of availability is acceptable?
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- Questions to ask technical staff when clarifying their availability
requirements (cont.):
- Compared with other projects, what priority would you assign to
improving availability?
- What measures can boost current availability to your recommended
percentage?
- How will availability improvements affect access, performance, customer
needs, security, and scalability?
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- Questions to ask management staff when clarifying their availability
requirements:
- What is the cost of one hour of down time during business hours?
- What is the cost of down time during off-hours?
- What is your ideal availability
percentage?
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- Questions to ask management staff when clarifying their availability
requirements (cont.):
- What part of the application or access is most important to keep
available?
- Compared with other projects, what priority would you assign to
improving availability?
- How much are you willing to spend to ensure that the network or system
remains available for your ideal percentage of time?
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- Questions to ask the technical staff in addressing scalability and
integration needs:
- How and where is the network’s growth currently limited?
- What needs to change to accommodate growth or new hardware/software?
- In what ways do you expect the network to grow over the next two years?
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- Questions to ask the technical staff in addressing scalability and
integration needs (cont.):
- How will improving scalability and integration affect customers,
performance, security, and availability?
- How would you prioritize your suggested measures for accommodating
growth?
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- Questions to ask the management staff in addressing scalability and
integration needs:
- In what ways do you expect the network to grow over the next one to
five years?
- Which of these growth directions is your top priority?
- What type of hardware and software do you expect to adopt in coming
months and years?
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- Questions to ask the management staff in addressing scalability and
integration needs (cont.):
- How much are you willing to spend to optimally position the network and
systems for growth?
- Would you place a higher priority on positioning the network and
systems for growth or on improving network security, availability,
usability, or performance?
- Would you place a higher priority on facilitating better network and
systems integration or on improving network security, availability,
usability, or performance?
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- Questions to ask technical staff when identifying needs for improving
network security:
- What type of security must be improved?
- Why does security need to be improved?
- Based on the reasons underlying the need for improved security, to what
extent does security need to be improved?
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- Questions to ask technical staff when identifying needs for improving
network security (cont.):
- Will the improvement require extra staff, hardware, software, or
consulting services?
- Compared to other needs, what is the priority of security improvements?
- How will security improvements affect network access, performance, or
scalability?
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- Pilot network
- Small-scale network that stands in for the larger network
- Tips for creating a more realistic and useful pilot network:
- Include at least one of each type of device that might be affected by
the change
- Use the same transmission methods and speeds as employed on your
network
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- Tips to creating a more realistic and useful pilot network (cont.):
- Try to emulate the number of segments, protocols, and addressing
schemes in your network
- Always implement the same server and client software and configurations
on your pilot network as found in your current network
- Once you have established the pilot network, test it for at least two
weeks to verify that its performance, security, availability, or other
characteristics meet your criteria
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- Among the things to explain to users:
- How their access to the network will be affected
- How their data will be protected during the change
- Whether you will provide any means for users to access the network
during the change
- Whether the change will require users to learn new skills
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- Project management is the practice of managing resources, staff, budget,
timelines, and other variables so as to complete a specific goal within
given bounds
- A project plan describes how the details of a managed project are
organized
- Process management involves planning for and handling the steps required
to accomplish a goal in a systematic way
- Contingency planning involves identifying steps that will minimize the
risk of unforeseen circumstances endangering the quality or timeliness
of the project’s goals
- Once a milestone is reached, verify that you are on the right path
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- In addition to being specific, project goals should be attainable
- Baselining includes keeping a history of a variety of network factors
- Needs assessment is the process of clarifying the reasons and objectives
for proposed change
- A good technique for beginning to clarify user requirements involves
user interviews
- Have technical staff answer a number of question to clarify performance
requirements
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- To best determine availability requirements, interview both technical
and management staff
- Integration and scalability needs may drive network changes, though they
are less likely to be the primary reason for changes than are customer,
performance, or security needs
- Like user or performance needs, security needs must be clearly defined
before a project commences
- In almost every instance, it is advisable to notify users of changes
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