Free Assessment

How Autonomous Is Your NOC?

10 questions. 2 minutes. Find out where your network operations stand on the autonomy scale and get a clear roadmap to eliminate manual toil.

Questions

2 min

To Complete

1–5

Maturity Scale

Assessment Progress 0 / 10

Question 1 of 10 — Monitoring & Alerting

How does your NOC detect network issues?

Users call us when something breaks. We rely on complaints and manual checks.

Level 1

Basic SNMP polling with static thresholds. Lots of alert noise and false positives.

Level 2

Centralized monitoring (PRTG, LibreNMS, etc.) with tuned thresholds and alert deduplication.

Level 3

Event correlation and AIOps-assisted root cause analysis. Alerts are grouped and prioritized automatically.

Level 4

Predictive analytics catch issues before they impact users. Self-healing triggers automatically.

Level 5

Question 2 of 10 — Incident Response

When a network incident occurs, what does the first 15 minutes look like?

Someone SSHes into devices and starts troubleshooting manually. No runbooks.

Level 1

We have documented runbooks, but engineers follow them manually step-by-step.

Level 2

Some runbooks are partially automated. An engineer kicks off a script and monitors output.

Level 3

Most L1/L2 incidents auto-remediate. Engineers only engage for escalated or novel issues.

Level 4

Closed-loop automation handles remediation end-to-end. Engineers review post-action reports, not live incidents.

Level 5

Question 3 of 10 — Configuration Management

How do you manage network device configurations?

CLI, one device at a time. Configs live on the devices themselves.

Level 1

Configs are backed up periodically (RANCID, Oxidized) but changes are still manual CLI.

Level 2

Templates and scripts handle bulk changes. Some use of Ansible or similar tools.

Level 3

Source of truth (NetBox, NSO) drives intent-based config. Drift detection and auto-remediation in place.

Level 4

Full GitOps pipeline. Config changes go through PR review, CI validation, and automated deployment. Zero CLI.

Level 5

Question 4 of 10 — Change Management

What does a typical network change look like?

Changes happen ad-hoc. No formal process, no pre/post validation. Fingers crossed.

Level 1

Change tickets exist but validation is manual. Maintenance windows are long and stressful.

Level 2

Pre/post checks are scripted. Changes are templated but still require human execution.

Level 3

Changes are automated with rollback capability. Lab validation happens before production.

Level 4

Continuous deployment. Changes are tested in CI, canary-deployed, and auto-rolled-back on anomaly detection.

Level 5

Question 5 of 10 — Provisioning

How long does it take to bring a new device into production?

Days to weeks. Manual console config, lots of back-and-forth with the team.

Level 1

We have baseline configs we paste in, but customization is still manual per device.

Level 2

Templated provisioning with some automation. Takes hours, not days.

Level 3

Zero-touch provisioning for most device types. Plug in, auto-configures from source of truth.

Level 4

Fully automated lifecycle. Device registered in IPAM, config generated, deployed, validated, and monitored — no human touch.

Level 5

Question 6 of 10 — Compliance & Audit

How do you ensure network devices stay compliant with security and operational policies?

We don't really check. Audit time is a fire drill every year.

Level 1

Manual spot-checks. Someone SSHes in and eyeballs configs against a spreadsheet.

Level 2

Automated compliance scans run periodically. Reports generated but remediation is manual.

Level 3

Continuous compliance checking with auto-remediation for known drift patterns.

Level 4

Policy-as-code. Compliance rules are version-controlled and enforced in the deployment pipeline. Non-compliant configs can't deploy.

Level 5

Question 7 of 10 — Documentation & Source of Truth

Where does your team go to understand the current state of the network?

Tribal knowledge. Ask Dave — he's been here 15 years and knows where everything is.

Level 1

Visio diagrams and spreadsheets that are probably 6 months out of date.

Level 2

IPAM/DCIM tools (NetBox, etc.) that are mostly accurate. Updated manually after changes.

Level 3

Source of truth is auto-populated from the network. Discrepancies trigger alerts.

Level 4

The source of truth IS the network state. Intent-based system ensures reality always matches desired state.

Level 5

Question 8 of 10 — Capacity Planning

How does your team handle capacity planning and traffic engineering?

We don't. We find out we need more bandwidth when things start dropping.

Level 1

Monthly utilization reports. Someone eyeballs trends in a spreadsheet.

Level 2

Dashboards with trend analysis (Grafana, etc.). Thresholds alert before saturation.

Level 3

ML-based forecasting predicts capacity needs. Automated ticket creation for upgrades.

Level 4

Dynamic traffic engineering. The network re-optimizes paths and scales resources automatically based on demand.

Level 5

Question 9 of 10 — Testing & Validation

How do you test network changes before they hit production?

Production IS the test environment. We find out if it works when we push it.

Level 1

Peer review of configs on a whiteboard or in a ticket. No actual lab testing.

Level 2

We have a lab environment. Major changes get tested there first, but it's not always up to date.

Level 3

Virtual labs (CML, EVE-NG, Containerlab) spin up on demand. Automated test suites validate changes.

Level 4

Digital twin of the network. Every change runs through CI with topology-aware integration tests before deployment.

Level 5

Question 10 of 10 — Team & Culture

How does your network team relate to automation?

Automation? That's for the DevOps people. We're network engineers, we use the CLI.

Level 1

A few people write scripts, but it's not expected or rewarded. Most of the team doesn't code.

Level 2

Automation is an initiative. We have a dedicated person or small team working on it.

Level 3

Most engineers write automation. NetDevOps practices are standard. Automation-first is the default.

Level 4

The team builds platforms, not configs. Engineers are measured on automation coverage and MTTR reduction, not tickets closed.

Level 5

0/5

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