To Phil153, the lovable idiot non-savant who just deleted his post:
Quoting Phil's deleted response:
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I don't know a damn thing about 2+2's backend/business but I can say most of these points are worthless.
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Choose your technical staff wisely.
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As opposed to unwisely?
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Well, yes.
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You know your business, techies know technology.
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From what I understand, they paid the freaking development guy to work on parts of the upgrade for them.
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From what you understand, did they get what they paid for?
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Many techies will be able to understand your business.
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And?
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And they would know that shaving 1 day from a 3 day procedure won't cut it when the business requires a transparent procedure?
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It's your job to find one.
-- Remember that your techie works for you.
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But I thought that technies know technology...shouldn't you tell them what you want and leave them be?
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Absolutely not - you manage them. The technical plan they develop must meet your business requirements, and it must pass review. You need to arrange to provide whatever is needed for the plan, and you need to monitor the testing results on an ongoing basis. That's what managers do.
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Consider your reasons for upgrading.
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Better performance, version able to receive security updates, coincides with site design upgrade, improved features requested by many members, enables future tweaks.
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Very good.
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-- What are you trying to accomplish? What are you risking?
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1. See above. 2. Nothing.
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Nothing? That's pretty funny, Phil, given the experience of the last three days.
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What are the drawbacks to upgrading? The benefits?
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I'm sure this question occurred to them. I mean...
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I'm sure you'd be surprised at how many businesses have been crushed by far less.
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What if you decided just to stand still? Any problems?
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Is this for business reasons, or for your techie?
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Wait, I thought technies knew their stuff, and we know business. If a technie says an upgrade is good, should we not listen?
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If you've taken the time to read through this thread, you now have learned enough to answer this question. I bet Ryan could set you straight on this.
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Plan your upgrade.
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Plenty of planning went into this upgrade.
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I have a problem with either the word "plenty" or "planning"; I just don't know which one.
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Test your upgrade first
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Um, putting it one the archiver server doesn't count??
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Um, apparently not!!
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Your customers are not a testbed.
-- Use a separate staging area.
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That's not always easy or viable. 2+2 isn't a multi billion dollar company.
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LOL at multi billion.
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-- Use artificial load generation to simulate real life.
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This is where they may have had room for improvement; hard to know without specifics.
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Be sure that the new features are working as you hope.
-- Remember to check that the basic stuff still works.
-- Make a testbed beta available to some helpful customers.
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They did all this.
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I'm sure they tried to address what they thought of. Next time, they'll think of more.
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-- Review the planned benefits, every point. All proven?
-- Review the risks, every point. Satisfied?
-- If your techie didn't do all of this, you screwed up; bad hire, learn the lesson.
- If things look good, announce your planned upgrade
-- Give plenty of warning to your customers
-- Give yourself plenty of time to back out
-- Remember that the software works for you, not vice-versa
- Finish your testing
-- Don't hurry.
-- Don't be afraid to back out; believe your own eyes.
-- Accept a schedule slip if it's too early to decide.
-- Remember that you are in charge.
- Go for it
-- After all your worries are satisfied, pull the trigger.
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Um, they did every one of these things too. How is copy pasting some random internet advice helpful?
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No copy pasting here; just the points as they occurred to me, many of which obviously were not followed. Especially the parts about managing the technological process.
Hey Phil, are you the same groundhog that missed seeing his shadow recently, and said that spring would have come by now? Nice track record, rodent boy.