17. Management Review: Financial Analysis

The decision to build out a major network is a business decision, not a technical decision. At some point in the life of any network design—and usually at many points—it will be necessary to review the design and its underlying assumptions in order to assure ourselves that what we are doing makes sense in the context of our overall organizational goals. Somewhere in our organization, someone is responsible for authorizing the expenditures that will bring this network to fruition.

In most cases, that someone is not us. It may be a senior executive or, more often, a group of executive decision makers. Engineering management may participate in this group, but it is rarely the case that engineering has the ...

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