Partnering with Other Groups to Improve Performance

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

In enterprise organizations, where corporate intranets might be accessed by employees in far-reaching parts of the country or the world, IT administrators in areas that share the intranet must work together to ensure optimal performance for all users. Take time to find out how the performance of other areas is affecting the performance of your applications and systems; then work with IT administrators in other areas to coordinate efforts to improve performance.

If the systems and applications that you manage depend on the performance of other systems and applications, use this guide to help you collaborate with your IT partners:

  1. Identify your partners:

    • Start early in the IT cycle to contact partners and find performance allies in other groups and on your own team. Obtain agreement to work together to maintain and improve performance, including upgrading, adding to, or changing your network components.

    • Determine how the performance of other systems and applications affects your systems and applications, and vice versa; then document the dependencies and share the data with your partners.

  2. Before you begin your design, obtain information about your users. You must know your users in order to set realistic goals for response times and system preferences. If possible, conduct usability tests to discover the actual needs, behaviors, and preferences of real users.

  3. Set performance goals for your group, and establish a timeline:

    • Set performance goals and test plans for your group.

    • Discuss key milestones in your timeline.

    • Identify competing priorities, especially conflicting priorities of partners outside your immediate group.

  4. Coordinate your plans and goals with your partners plans and goals:

    • Share your goals, timeline, and milestones with your partners; then synchronize goals and timelines with them. Define terminology to ensure that everyone understands each goal and service level. Include a plan for communicating with your partners.

    • Write contracts, if needed, to set service level agreements for performance and to balance competing priorities so that other groups priorities do not adversely affect yours (and vice versa).

    • Establish baseline requirements for operating systems and hardware.

    • Establish guidelines for how to monitor any mutual performance dependencies. Establish minimum testing standards. Establish a system for logging bugs against performance problems.

  5. Design the systems and applications for your group to minimize their impact on other components:

    • Design your client systems so they do not put unnecessary load on servers. For example, ensure that clients' browsers are compression-enabled, and enable HTTP compression of static files on your Web server to provide faster transmission times.

    • Test to identify and minimize unnecessary client requests, such as requests from impatient users who make numerous attempts to access the same page. It is recommended that you set the AspQueueConnectionTestTime Metabase Property so that your server does not process abandoned requests, enable HTTP Keep-Alives, and set up caching to minimize requests from clients Web browsers.