Most people around you will be frightened. They will be fighting fires with their right hand, while their left hand is updating their resume on Monster.com. They will be frantically trying to figure out which SQL and programs are consuming a lot of resources, what Oracle processes are waiting for, what users are experiencing, and the CPU consumption-all while people are standing behind them asking for constant updates. What you need is a superior method you trust. There is no way you can or would want to look at every statistic. It's just not possible, and the good news is that it's completely unnecessary. With a proven method, you can take one step forward at a time by gathering the minimum amount of necessary information.

Over the years, I've noticed a pattern or characteristics of firefighting situations. I think we can learn a lot about prevention if we think about the common elements that help stoke1 the fire:

* The critical production system is involved. This one is kind of obvious because, if the situation were not critical and a production system were not involved, then it wouldn't be classified as firefighting. But it's a common element.