Release Cycle Rant

Earlier this weekend Susan Bradley replied to my forward of the 6 month extension to SUS 1.0 support questioning the need for extended product support. What follows is my rant on what IT management is actually like when you have to support thousands of users over multiple sites and what IT network management is actually like outside of “small” business. Although I’m not against annual release points software needs to be supported for an extended period of time because each release points has the QA process of its own, not to mention all the other software that interfaces with it. Hope you enjoy the read:

Susan: “June of 2006? We have folks that can’t deploy/debug a free patch management tool in 11 months so now we give them 6 more months?”

Yes, we do need time. If anybody else is thinking along the above lines here is a big reality check:

Not everyone out here is a one man shop running the home office with three computers and a PDA from the Action Pack. Some of us tend to have customers whose applications we support and they tend to require things like service, support, patching, migrations. Takes up some time.

Then we have the operating systems running on computers, both of which require continuous maintenance, tuning, security audits, driver upgrades, hardware replacements, test-bed buildouts abd application testing. That takes up some more time.

None of us are born knowing how to support all this technology either. That requires training, education, experiments, tests, certifications, vendor calls (and TS follow-ups) and waiting on resolution. It also just so happens that any business with more than one employee requires scheduling to get all of the above accomplished. That takes time.

We also tend to like to test the software. Testing software on multiple hardware platforms, release points and remote sites takes time. Feedback takes time. Vendor followup takes time. In the real world upgrades/migrations even for “free patch management tools” don’t work like this: “wow, I can’t believe it installed!!! Add it to SMS Bob!”; No, it takes time.

We also like to document that software. Some of us don’t live and die by the vendor defaults either, some of us extend vendor solutions by writing our own software. Those tend to take time. And when it’s done there is the part of training the helpdesk, sales staff, marketing staff. That takes time.

So yes, more time helps. I am not trying to be disrespectful or sarcastic at all. This is how things work in the real world. You can not just stand on the hill and yell “just upgrade” because when you support large networks the install process is not quite the double-click method. Just because your smallbiz rollout took minutes doesn’t mean that our can take even remotely the same amount of time.

If anybody doubts the above comments please feel free to get an IT job at a big company. See how long it takes you to get anything even approved, let alone tested, supported, documented, debugged, headcount-justified and finally deployed.

Microsoft realizes this and they gave us extra time. They deserve nothing but praise and admiration for understanding what real IT pro’s have to go through to manage IT and I for one thank them.