new.png How to start a troubleshooting assessment

Authors: GrantCovell, DeniseMcKinnon
Build basis: None

Assessing the scope of the situation can help you narrow down a list of possible causes. Included below are some questions to keep in mind as you investigate. These questions provide general guidance for getting started and isolating the source of the problem.

Symptoms (What?)

  • Can you clearly describe the problem? When you do X, Y happens.
  • What are the actions that cause the problem to occur?
  • What operations were you trying to execute?
  • Are there any error messages? Can you get to logs and are there errors there?
  • Does the issue occur in one UI and not another? (For example, web client versus Eclipse client)

Impact (Who?)

Question: Does this happen to one user?

Answer: Bob is the only one who takes a long time to log in to the application.
Implication: A problem that occurs for a single user might suggest something unique about the user.

Question: Does it happen to a group of users?

Answer: Everyone in Building 5 has this problem.
Implication: A problem that occurs for a specific group suggests something unique about the group, or a network problem specific to a location.

Question: Does it happen to a group of users in one geographic location?

Answer: Queries take a long time to respond for users in Brazil.
Implication: A problem that occurs for a particular geography suggests a network problem.

Question: Does it happen to everyone?

Answer: The product is always slow for all users.
Implication: A problem that occurs for everyone regardless of location suggests a database, server, or application problem.

Timing (When?)

Question: When did the problem first start?
Answer: The problem started last Thursday.
Implication: There were some changes made on or before last Thursday that might be contributing to the situation.

Question: Does the problem occur consistently?

Answer: The problem seems worse right after lunch.
Implication: There are differences in the usage or activities performed in the afternoon that are different than the morning.

Question: Does the occurrence steadily decrease over a period of time?

Answer: It gets worse at the end of the day.
Implication: Performance issues can result from insufficient resource availability or over-usage during that period of time.

Environmental changes (Where?)

Question: Has the client hardware or software changed?

Answer: There were hardware changes.
Implication: The changes introduced an incompatibility or resulted in an unsupported configuration.

Question: Has the server hardware or software changed?

Answer: There were changes made to the Jazz server.
Implication: The upgrade might have introduced an incompatibility or resulted in an unsupported configuration.

Question: Has the network changed?

Answer: There were network changes made in a particular building.
Implication: Those changes might have impacted network access or introduced authentication issues.

Question: Has the browser or browser version changed?

Answer: Users who changed browsers are seeing the issue.
Implication: The new browser introduced incompatibilities or might not be supported.

Related topics: None

External links:

  • None

Additional contributors: None

This topic: Deployment > WebHome > DeploymentTroubleshooting > HowToStartATroubleshootingAssessment
History: r11 - 2013-10-23 - 12:53:22 - Main.dmmckinn
 
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