The servers went down again today and the CEO is panicking. Our recent strategy—guessing what the problem is and making minor tweaks— has obviously not worked. We need to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Last week, our IT team recognized symptoms of problems in the network that could be causing the outages. I’ll be sending you the team’s findings in a series of e-mails so that your team can analyze and diagnose potential causes for each of the problems. Document your findings in the attached problem report template and send it to me for review. You’ll notice a severity rating guide at the top of the attached template - be sure to assign one of these numbers to each of the problems that I send you. For the time being, ignore the last two sections of the template: possible solutions and recommended policy changes. The IT directors and I want to review and pinpoint the causes of the problems before attacking them.

I’ve also attached a revised security policy that reflects some of the recommendations you made last week. You may not need it so much for your investigation into the causes of the server outages, but, along with the network topology you received last week, it will probably prove useful when you begin outlining the best way to solve these problems - something I'll be asking you to do later.

We have our work cut out for us here, but I’m confident that, with the provided symptoms and logs, the revised security policy, and your team’s effort, we can get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Thanks,

IT Director

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it and when he can.” (Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897)