While planting over 30 large trees recently, as part of a landscape project, I was reminded of a saying from an ole’ nursery man that I used to know. He said that when planting new trees, they typically followed the following growth pattern for the next three seasons: Sleep, Creep, and Leap. This pattern is very typical of most wireless deployments that I’ve observed.

In phase one, the ‘sleep’ phase, we are designing our wireless network, deploying our pilot site, working out coverage issues, and troubleshooting application problems. This is the phase where doing our homework and selecting products that actually meets business needs vs. just being the latest technology come into play.

In the creep phase, this is when we start getting more users and devices on our network. This is the phase where we need to be fine tuning the ‘as deployed’ wireless documentation, but also documenting the processes that need to occur when things go wrong. This should include those steps (and tools) needed to troubleshoot the wireless network along with escalation paths when things don’t go as planned.

The last phase is when the real fun begins! With trees, it’s seeing them start really taking off and grow like a weed. For the wireless network, this is when all the hard work starts paying off with increased business productivity and flexibility. However, just like with anything else, we still need to keep on top of things, prune when necessary, and enhance as required.