Kevin Hill shares some consulting advice:
Stop. Don’t Open SSMS Yet.
You’ve heard it before: “The server is slow.”
What does that actually mean?
If you jump straight into SQL Server looking for blocking, bad queries, or a missing index, you’re working with bad input. And bad input = wasted time.
The real work starts before you ever connect to SQL Server.
Click through for some guidance on how to frame the conversation. Even if you aren’t a consultant, I think it’s a good idea to scope and triage the problem in a similar fashion before trying to dive in and see what you can find.