Workshop

if they have a plan, they are going in the right direction.
Going in the right direction is what the SOAP method is all about. Not every problem you run into as a
troubleshooter is going to be solvable within that day or week—particularly problems that are not showstoppers
(emergency room visits). In particular, problems that come and go (intermittent problems) are
usually long-term and complex troubleshooting jobs. To be able to wrap your arms around a complex
problem, you have to segregate the problem into its component parts—that is, the subjective report and
the objective facts. It’s particularly important to be able to separate the subjective out—someone may be
reporting something that has some bearing on the problem but perhaps is not pointing directly at the
problem. Consider someone who’s reporting chest pains—is this person reporting a heart attack or a
muscle problem? The report of pain in the chest is a subjective feeling—the active investigation that
reveals a heart attack or muscle pain is the objective finding. The subjective is useful but can only be
borne out by investigation.
Just the Facts
When considering the facts in an intermittent or complex network issue (also known in the industry lingo
as “troubleshooting a weird problem”), you need to categorize a basic list of objective items that can help
point towards a solution:
• Duration of problem (all the time or intermittent?)
• Start of problem (date and time)
• Place (on the network, physical location)
• Number of users involved
• Configuration of workstation (like or unlike others?)
• Number and types of applications involved (running simultaneously with?)
• User name(s) involved, security group(s) belonged to
• Measurements
• Behavior of similar applications
Even though you may have a lot of objective data, you might not have the right objective data to analyze
in order to come to the right conclusion. Therefore, your “plan” item on your first couple of tries on a
tough problem will probably be to gather more data. Don’t give up; the more data you have, the better
guess you can make.
SOAP in the Real World
Let’s take a case in which a user says she can’t run a particular Web applet that she needs for her job.
Figure 6.1 shows a logical map of the site; her PC lives at point A on the map.