I’ll be training new support engineers in the coming weeks and an important part of that is the practical exercises. In my experience people learn better when they are practising the lessons that they learn.

When I teach log analysis we use logs from real support cases. The attendees will be working through the logs and identifying the cause and planning the next steps. I’ll be teaching techniques that allow them to minimise their effort and dramatically speed up the investigation process.

Working through the scenarios builds confidence and helps ensure that they can respond quickly and effectively when the next case occurs.

Should I war game/practice scenarios outside of training?

Absolutely. These practice runs ensure that problems can be handled as efficiently as possible and can find issues such as:

• Problems restoring backups
• Missing steps in procedures
• Assumptions about who is doing which steps
• Extra incorrect log entries generated because the incorrect logger has been used - See the Logger related messages/settings mini-series in the index
• Incorrect communication details e.g. out of date phone numbers

They are also a good opportunity to build the interaction between the teams. I have always found that emergency situations are easier when the teams know each other and have established processes to follow.

How do I justify the time?

A good argument for justifying this type of practice is to explain the cost of handling the situation when there is a problem.

What if there is a missing step and the process fails?

How much time/money would be lost?