7 Operational Workflows and Continuous Improvement Free Online FlashCards

What should an operational baseline document?

A current inventory of important assets and dependencies, service and network diagrams, approved configuration baselines, recovery information, and operational responsibilities.

How should teams keep operational documentation accurate?

Assign owners, control access, date significant changes, and review records after changes, incidents, and scheduled audits so documentation matches the operating environment.

What should routine service monitoring track?

Track availability, performance, capacity, errors, configuration changes, and relevant system, application, security, and network records.

What makes a monitoring alert actionable?

Define the triggering condition, recipient, assessment timeframe, and diagnostic information. Tune thresholds and investigate repeated false alarms.

What is the sequence for a routine operational change?

A routine change proceeds through request, assessment, approval, implementation, verification, and closure with review.

How should teams handle an undocumented configuration deviation?

Investigate the cause and reconcile the deviation with approved changes; do not silently accept it.

What controls still apply to an emergency change?

Expedite approval when needed to reduce immediate harm, then record the change as soon as practicable, review it afterward, and check it against the intended configuration.

What does the recovery time objective (RTO) specify?

The target time for restoring a service.

Why should recovery follow service dependencies?

Restore services in dependency-aware order; for example, restore identity, DNS, and network connectivity before an application that depends on them.

How can a team verify that recovery is complete?

Confirm service integrity, expected performance, stakeholder acceptance, and operational ownership—not merely that a server starts.

What operational records can provide audit evidence?

Tickets, approvals, configuration histories, monitoring records, access reviews, backup results, and exercise reports can document changes, authorization, control effectiveness, and issue resolution.

What should a post-incident review accomplish?

Conduct a blameless review of expectations, events, supporting evidence, and factors affecting impact; assign corrective actions, track them to completion, and verify they worked.