Storming In Or Taking Baby Steps

When you have a problem (specifically, technology related) there are two main methods for dealing with it:

1. Storming In - throwing everything you have at the issue, e.g.: trying every performance related command you know, changing hardware, etc.

2. Taking Baby Steps - slowly and thoroughly analyzing the issue, e.g.: reproducing the issue on a development environment, checking all changes that have been made, etc.

Reality, like always, is some shade of gray so what you do in practice is usually some combination of the above two methods.

Many times it's not clear what approach to use. Storming in will sometimes solve the current crisis but might handle only the symptoms leaving you unprepared for the next time the problem manifests itself (and this time the instant solution might not work). Generally, it's always better to understand the causes for a problem and to investigate them, but sometimes issues won't reproduce on development environments and the causes are just too voodooish and some issues are just simpler to ignore. And after all, time IS a valuable resource.