Comments on: Top 3 Patch Management Do’s and Don’ts

By: Ed Fisher

Ed Fisher — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:14:06 +0000

Tana
I like how you changed CIOs to gods…I guess you worked there too! And you’re spot on; every time one of them questioned why a project was still not done, it came back to the fact that without the maintenance window, we couldn’t put in the upgrade necessary to proceed. Come maintenance window time, they would still not approve!
Ed

By: Ed Fisher

Ed Fisher — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:10:39 +0000

Hi Jack,
Glad to hear I am not alone in that…it seems so obvious, yet almost every time I go somewhere new, it’s a new concept to them.
Ed

By: Tana George

Tana George — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:32:41 +0000

We often forget that the technical aspects of patching are just a drop in the sea, compared to all the bureaucracy that goes with it. Your story about the 7 gods that had all to agree on a patch window reminds me how inflexible organizations are. And if something goes wrong, it makes no sense to explain that the reason is that the patch couldn’t be done on time due to bureaucratic rules.

By: Jack Eastman

Jack Eastman — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:24:21 +0000

I can’t tell you how important Do #3 is. I spent 5 years working with a vendor for a very high-demand client, and our scheduling team could never get their apps working because a simple patch to their software was postponed for, no joke, over a year. Maybe it’s inconvenient at times, but the temporary loss of productivity is easily made up over time when you patch critical bugs or errors.