While you're working through the troubleshooting process, it's a great idea to make notes as you go, and keep track of significant times during the incident:
- What time was the incident first reported?
- What time did you get into a position to start troubleshooting?
- What time did you isolate the issue?
- What time was pertinent information discovered?
- And so on
Another thing to be aware of is the estimate. Estimates are something that higher-ups like to hear, in a lot of cases, because it means they can pass the estimates on to their own higher-ups, or to customers.
If you have no clear idea what's causing an issue yet, you can't give a reliable estimate, and you should explain this. However, if you've managed to isolate the issue and found it to be caused by something such as a stored procedure running against...
