I am flexing my muscles to jump. These are the moments of peace before the storm… yes, in an hour or so I will open the connection to our production server and I will publish a major release of my software!

As always in these case I try to relax, to make a list of every single step, collecting information, code and data from everyone involved and I check everything twice.

Ready… Set…Go!

The best moment to release a new software, a patch, an update is ALWAYS the morning, preferably NOT on fridays. If anything bad happens you can rollback, patch, fix or do whatever you need to, without running late, without your men running home because it is late, or simply being agitated because it is late. This is a very important lesson I have learnt during many years in software development.

Remember: Shit Happens! (and usually during releases!)

If someone ask you to set the release deadline on Friday at 15:00, do not accept. Take your time! Go for thursday or for monday, avoid the afternoon, because nine times out of ten you will forget something, and the half-an-hour-job you had planned would become the three-hours-run. Avoid disasters, keep a list of the steps you need to perform, DELEGATE the physical steps to your team, COORDINATE and most important of all:

DON’T PANIC!

Well… I will take a good breath, check my list twice and…

UPDATE: The release went smooth! As planned there were two or three things that had to be fixed on the fly, but overall the job was carried out (almost) painlessly! For the next week I am planning some good debugging (do you really think those bastards will not jump out, even after a LONG debugging?), but I can start looking to the next milestone! Cheerio!