On Wednesday 14 April 2004 09:31, John Wilson wrote: > On April 14, 2004 03:12 am, Anne Wilson wrote: > > On Wednesday 14 April 2004 08:21, RichardA wrote: > > <snip> > > > > No one expects Mandrake to actually communicate to their > > > customers, even before a major restructure of the mirrors, but it > > > seems they all went home for Easter withour fixing it. So much > > > for Mandrake's 'enterprise' ambitions. > > > > An unfair and unjustified comment. Try reading the explanation on > > the Club pages. The situation only developed as people were going > > home for the holidays. Warly tried to contact the various mirror > > owners, but they are totally independent of Mandrake, and most of > > them were unavailable. Oddly enough, they like holidays, too. > > There is no way that Mandrake employees can guarantee how long it > > will take mirror owners to sort out this problem. Let's just hope > > that not too many of them are taking an extended break. > > Actually, Anne, Richard's comment is fair and justified. As is your > response. One point I'd like to make is that the problem developed > the monday prior to the Easter weekend and one of the reasons it > occurred was communication with the mirror admins or the apparent > lack of it. > > What could have happened was that Mandrake (generic :-) ) could have > done some testing of fixes over the weekend, announced that, and then > they'd be in a position to have the fixes up and running by > yesterday. Not all mirrors fixed to be sure, but working on it. > > That said, and I'm one of the very frustrated ones, there are things > to be learned here. > > First off, never, ever do a major change the weekend before, during > or after a major global long weekend. It's an invitation to > disaster. And when you invite disaster it usually walks on in. I've > learned this through painful personal experience. > > Second communicate major changes of things like mirror structures to > all user groups. Before doing it. Communicate status of the > changes, success, failure, partial success/failure. There is > absolutely no reason not to and every reason to. A discussion on the > cooker lists is not notification, btw. If you want to play in > enterprise space then do things the way enterprises want it done. > > Third, test your changes. Retest. Break them. Figure out what can > go wrong. Have a plan in place if and when it does go wrong. This > wasn't done, as near as I can tell. At least there's no evidence > anywhere that any testing was done. > > Fourth. Have a rollback/commit plan in place. Just in case. > > I did project management on this sort of thing for years before > deciding that I much more enjoyed working with the equipment itself > than planning around it. Over the years IT has developed some pretty > well known rules around this kind of major change from hard > experience in what can, and will, go wrong. There are very good > reasons for the four points I mentioned above. There is a fifth. > > Fifth. Remember Murphy's Law. :-) > > I hope this is a learning experience for Mandrake and Warly as much > as it is a frustrating and, quite truthfully, anger causing > experience for us. > > That said, with the exception of one very important update, the > rollout of 10CE has been a fairly painless experience for all > concerned if traffic on this list is any indication. It's been > polished, works and most of the rough edges taken off. What's > surprising is how few messages have appeared saying that this release > broke something compared to past releases. > > MDK 10 is a high quality bit of software, make no mistake about that. > It's even better when we consider that 10CE is a public beta. In > fact, it's gorgeous. :-) > > It's sad that this mess, perhaps not entirely preventable, may cause > it a black eye. And this comes from poor planning on Warly's part. > > ttfn > > John Amen. I would just like to add it is especially difficult on us newbies, I havent been able to trust the mirrors for weeks and that has nothing to do with 10. -- Regards; Hoyt
Ignore the past and you will fail! Ignore the future and you have already failed!
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