Optimize phase

One needs to constantly evolve and improve to maintain a competitive advantage. A continual/continuous improvement process (CIP) is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. It is this desire of the organization to continuously evolve and improve that is addressed in the optimization phase.

This process is closely tied to the operations phase as the results of the operations phase are analyzed to detect recurring problems and to see if there are any design discrepancies, or enhancements that can be made to the network to improve service availability or performance. The goal of the optimize phase is to identify and resolve problems before they actually start to manifest themselves on the network resulting in service disruptions.

The optimize phase of the network lifecycle can cause changes to the network design to meet the service specifications with respect to functionality, performance, security, availability, and so on. In such cases, the network engineers go back to the drawing board to evaluate new alternatives and propose new approaches to meet the changing needs. Some of the things might need minor tweaks to the design, and hence can be handled by going back to the design phase of the network lifecycle, followed by implementation and testing. However, optimization can also be triggered by the maturity of a new technology in the market, and hence that needs a much broader scope, and the organization needs to start at the plan phase, and follow the complete cycle all over again. Whatever be the case, it is important to document the reasons for change, the proposed solution, and then follow it up with the rigor of the complete lifecycle in order for the network to be capable of meeting new requirements in a sustainable manner.