Introduction
2016: Why I stopped writing APM Blogs and then Started Again: Part 1 -- For those that want to catch up
I did not plan to write this second part six months later. But I am glad this happened since I can add some fresh perspective.
In part 1, I described working on a Lean Six Sigma project. but not the details of the project itself, That is described below at a high-level. Some other steps were left out for brevity. Part 3 will be on the project outcomes.
Investing in Knowledge
To keep your APM environment running smoothly, you, the APM administrator and user, need access to a knowledge base that is kept current and has solutions/next steps/workarounds to your issues.An ideal knowledge base also provides best practices on how to optimize and take full advantage of the APM solution.All this will help resolve a situation quicker. And the knowledge base must be easy to search and quickly retrieve relevant results.
Based on cases, conversations with internal experts, and other knowledge sources, Support Engineers have been actively creating typically 30-60 new APM/AXA/ASM knowledge documents each month These gets published quickly after a solution is found..Some of these are focused on install/upgrade effort.I post these new knowledge document links in this Community each month and now each week.
My Lean Six Sigma project was focusing getting the experts, Sustaining Engineering,to provide inputs to create new and updated knowledge documents as part of a formal process. A pilot would assess a possible process. Support and Engineering would decide after six months of tracking hits on these knowledge docs if this will be implemented as an official process.
Educating and Evangelizing
This is not something that you can turn on something like this in one day. Before a pilot took place for a month, the following needed to take place:
- Show the value of creating knowledge to APM Sustaining Engineer Management. They embraced this idea because they understood this meant more informed customers which can then stabilize, optimize, and maintain their environments (and I am grateful that still do very quite vocally.) They also suggested the participating Engineers for the pilot. This effort is a good partnership between our two teams with giving constant feedback, and making corresponding improvements.
- Conduct a survey to key APM non-support staff on how they search for knowledge and what areas they may be able to contribute knowledge document inputs.
- Create a wiki page explaining the pilot.
- Create, give and record training. This also included showing the value and the process during the pilot.
- Create spreadsheets to monitor pilot.
- Create a FAQ based on training on questions raised.
How did it go ? And what happened after the pilot ? That is for next time