1.Identify changes or upgrades needed to meet needs. (Audit of software & hardware)?

Maria recently decided that her NT server needed some routine maintenance and at the same time she decided to perform an operating system upgrade. Once the upgrade is started it can鈥檛 be aborted. She anticipates that the server will need to be down for approximately 3 hours. Maria takes down the server at 3.00 pm on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately she has forgotten to advise staff of the pending downtime so the reports that are needed for the weekend are incomplete.

The routine maintenance goes well. Unfortunately, however, problems develop with the operating system upgrade and at 7.30pm the server has not been restored. Maria鈥檚 pager begins to ring frantically: the call center operators cannot answer customer queries and take orders as they can鈥檛 access their database and ordering system.
By 9.15 pm the upgrade is still not complete and the organization is losing business. As the call center closes at 10.00pm and does not re-open until 10.00 am in Saturday morning,

Upgrades like OS upgrades should be done during non-business hours. Additionally operations should have been shifted over to a back-up server while the primary server was upgraded. Then operations could be switched back to the primary server once the upgrade is completed and functioning properly. In short Maria jumped without looking where or what she was jumping into.