Production Support strategy during support packs application

[Former Member]

Hi

We are planning to apply latest support packs very soon. We have a five system landscape, viz, One sand box, one development system, one QA system and an additional Test system for special project testing and a single instance production. Our challenge is that we have to continue to deliver multiple initiatives in parallel to the application of support packs. We have applied the SPs to the sand box to understand the differences and we are currently testing over there. We will have only a two weeks of solid change freeze period. When we apply the support packs to development, can we safely move the exisitng or new change requests to QA and then to Production without a severe impact. I would like to know any recommendations or learning points. We are on 4.7 version. Thanks in advance

Srinivas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Srinivas,

In general, it is good practice to release any outstanding change requests destined for production prior to importing the Support Packages into development. In fact, you must release any outstanding repairs in development prior to SP import because SPAM will not allow you to import the SPs other wise.

Once the changes have been released from development they wiil of course be queued in the buffer of your QA system. They should be imported into QA and subsequently production as soon as possible to avoid problems later.

What you are going to require is an emergency development system that can provide production support during the SP implementation phase, i.e. once SPs are imported into development and QA, your production system will be exposed if there is no development system available to support emergency fixes for production problems. At a minimum, you should attach an emergency development system to production during the freeze in case fixes are required. Any fixes applied to the emergency development system that are imported into production must be retrofitted into the real development system.

Regards,

Gary Jackson

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Gary,

Thank you very much for the feed back. Our team has adopted the similar strategy and your comments have confirmed that we are on the right track. Before applying the service packs on QAS, we are going to copy the DEV and will refresh the sandbox as an alternative DEV system during the freeze period. Thanks

Regards,

Srinivas