End of Year Release Freeze

[cbuchdahl]

Do any of you have a policy where you freeze any production changes at the end of the year and what are the reasons for this?

This is being brought up at work and I'd like to get a better understanding on the practice.



Thanks,
Chris

[m_croon]

Hi Chris,

I've worked with several clients were this change stop is the case. Unfortunately, I do not have any of their documentation available. Reasons for a change stop varied:
* change stop on financial systems (several clients, not necesarilly banks etc.):
> Period: end/beginning of month (1) and end/beginning of year
> reason: needed stability/availability around closing the fin. accounts for switch of month/year

* University: change on core systems around the start of the new academic year (class scheduling system etc.).
> Period: last week of summer holidays/first week of academic year.
> reason: needed stability/availability around invasion of 1000s of new students.

In other words:
1. Define the reasons why? Who will benefit from a change stop? Communicate to all involved about this client's need (for general understanding).
2. Keep an emergency procedure in place (for implementing security patches etc.).

Hope this helps,

Michiel

[cbuchdahl]

Helps a ton! Thanks for the response

-Chris

[ARoll]

Greetings,

In our organization, which is primarily retail, we have freeze periods which entail major holidays and then for financial support during quarter end processing. Some of the criteria that we utilize when evaluating the acceptance/approval of a request during a freeze period are:

1) If there is a Financial, Statutory or Regulatory Risk to the organization if the change does not take place. i.e. it must be demonstratable.
2) If the Change is the result of correcting a Service Outage.
3) If the Change is the prevention of a looming Service Outage.
4) If there is no viable workaround.

Some time frames, and this is dependent on your organization, around quarter end/year (QE/YE)end processing. Implementing a freeze so that support teams can concentrate on a static state system to complete those QE and YE activities. Also in my opinion it would be good practice especially around major holidays just due to typically many employees save their vacations for around this time from so support and development staff may be limited.
Hope this helps some.