As the summer winds down, many of us have experienced a professional lull with school breaks and summer vacations.

This transition offers a golden opportunity to prepare for a successful fall. Our team of System Admins and DBAs has compiled top strategies to make the most of this period:

1. Plan and roadmap future updates.
2. Determine which OS updates you’ve been putting off and do them
   1. Execute pending OS and database updates including applicable utilities and extensions
   2. Test, test, test - Testing in production is not testing! (example: CrowdStrike incident)
3. Ensure you have and implement a change control policy
4. Evaluate and improve current infrastructure
   1. Review your infrastructure as code to see if you have drift going on that you aren't aware of
   2. Pinpoint where your data is and isn’t
5. Audit your systems and streamline integrations including monitoring
6. Conduct Disaster recovery testing
7. Perform server maintenance
8. Update and backfill documentation
9. Focus on professional development
10. Reassess success metrics and goals
11. Prioritize and communicate your project goal, requirements, and timeline to internal and external support teams

Use the next few months to enhance your operation and database environment and applications, catch up on professional growth, and set clear goals for your organization. Follow along for detailed insights each week!

Ready to optimize seasonal downtime and ensure a smooth transition into fall? Reach out to Command Prompt for professional services and support!