Three Basic Release Rules

Here are three nice, simple, general rules regarding releases that you should try and stick to. If you don’t then you’re running on luck and eventually you’ll get called while doing something way more fun than deploying yet another bug fixing release.

  1. No releases on the day before a weekend / national holiday.
  2. No releases within two hours of the official end of your work day.
  3. No releases before you go away on holiday.

These should all be common sense (and to be ignored on the RARE occasions when something needs to happen right now) but I’m constantly surprised by the number of people that ignore them, make the release and then earn the enmity of their team as people start getting SMS and email alerts from their monitoring systems.

And a bonus trick, if you want sensible release times (none of this six AM insanity) ensure you’ve got developer and management support in case something goes wrong and you need either guidance or roll back assistance. It’s weird how the available windows change when it’s other peoples time (and sleep) on the block.