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The Problem Statement

Defining the problem statement is a routine task completed as a first step when starting a investigation.

It is characterised as:

  1. What makes you think there is a performance problem?
  2. Has this system ever performed well?
  3. What changed recently? Software? Hardware? Load?
  4. Can the problem be expressed in terms of latency or runtime?
  5. Does the problem affect everyone or a subset of users?
  6. What is the environment? What software and hardware are used? Versions? Configuration?