The administrator changes the plan, and remembers to think twice before acting.

**Administrator Change Plan: Think Thrice Before Acting**

This article is intended as an introduction to the AD FAQ section of this blog, aiming to make a declaration for all technical articles in this blog. It serves as a reminder that when making changes to actual environments, especially production environments, you must always back up first! Additionally, it calls on everyone to think carefully before acting when writing or reading articles from public media. Out of responsibility to yourself, your boss, and your clients (perhaps the order should be reversed), you should never arbitrarily attempt operations in a production environment. Below are some steps for implementing changes. Administrators who see this article and want to make changes to the production environment can consider these questions. Please adjust these steps reasonably according to your current human resources, finances, materials, and time conditions, and form your own operation manual!

1. **Gather Perspectives, Scientifically Verify**

After reading various articles from public media, it's essential to use the information obtained to form your own plan. There’s a verification process involved here. Even official documents from Microsoft or other products may not fully align with your current environment. Based on your experience, collaborate with team members and refer to past records to determine which methods and perspectives can be applied to your current environment. Don't act impulsively or try everything you see; otherwise, the results will only get worse.

2. **Implement the Plan, Simulate Operations**

First, confirm the project implementer, then divide the project list and schedule planning. All activities revolve around people; once people are established, related actions can follow. This involves a process: from problem to project, from project to person, to specific responsibilities. After establishing these things, a progress plan needs to be made, along with communication steps for each phase.

For plans that have initially taken shape, they should be tested as much as possible in a simulated environment to predict potential issues, assistance required, and necessary conditions. Some details might be overlooked at the time but could be critical or extremely disruptive during implementation. We need to list these details as much as possible in the implementation plan. With these safeguards, fewer problems will arise in the implementation steps, thereby ensuring the implementation results. Remember, these small matters can greatly affect the mood of the implementers, potentially causing serious consequences for the entire implementation plan. Here, we are actually confirming or ensuring the feasibility of the plan.

These plans may involve multiple options, allowing team members to discuss which solutions are more reasonable. These solutions may also need to include "regret pills" – not time travel, but rather, if problems arise during the operation of the selected solution, there should be remedial measures. The plans need to consider timing to facilitate collaboration and technical feasibility. For example, performing system changes during peak service hours is neither convenient for technical implementation nor ensures customer satisfaction.

3. **Collaborative Operations, Safety Review**

Based on the possible steps involved in the plan, determine the team members responsible for implementing the plan. For the already formed operational plan, collaborate with other members of the team to discuss its feasibility. These team members may include technical implementers, non-industry implementers, technical decision-makers, and even business decision-makers. Because in most project implementations, participants from all sides are involved.

If the plan contains technical issues or conflicts with company regulations, industry standards, or even national laws, the implementation plan needs to be revised and returned to step two. The reviewers in this step cannot overlap with the plan creators; otherwise, the implementation of the plan cannot be guaranteed.

4. **Track the Process, Improve Documentation**

This point needs to be emphasized again – something mentioned in all technical documents but often overlooked by implementers: backup, backup! In case problems arise, you won’t regret it later :).

For every step in the process, documentation should be retained, signed off by relevant participants, and submitted to supervisors for review. These documents are crucial for guiding the first step, safety reviews in the third step, and summarizing issues in the fifth step. Of course, over time, you’ll find that these documents are also a good way to report work. :)

For the progress of all phases, there should be a dedicated person tracking and reporting to the project leader. Especially for long-term implementation projects, someone must follow up on the progress; otherwise, completion will become indefinitely delayed. Follow up, follow up!

5. **Summarize Issues, Evaluate Processes**

After the technical implementation is completed, it’s time to summarize the problems encountered. As the saying goes, learn from past mistakes. Here, we return to the first point, forming a cycle. If previous issues resulted in financial losses, legal action may be necessary at times, using the records from step four.

On the other hand, all implementers of the project will present their views on the entire process during the summary meeting. This helps you improve the process and guide future implementations. Of course, you should also present improvements to your current work and structure for discussion to prevent similar problems in the future. There may be some projects requiring analysis, such as frequency of problems, types of problems, prediction of problems, scope of problems, and timing of problems.

Even if no issues have arisen, these evaluations should still be conducted regularly after a certain period of time. Problems may be potential threats. We need to formulate plans before the problems surface, and these plans must be simulated and confirmed by the direct executors of the project. Unfeasible plans are just empty talk; when problems occur, these ineffective plans can be fatal!

Summarizing these issues may inspire your next project :).

**Postscript**: Here, we’ve provided general steps for handling problems in daily management activities. If you need to implement them as a project, you should still refer to PMP, ITIL, and MOF. Actually, organizing these things into a set of guidelines creates an administrator's operational code of conduct and project implementation plan.

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