SBS: Thoughts on patch validation

I'm going to have to agree with Nick Whittome on this, in his response to Susan's post about the world of SBS consultants. While I probably sit closer to the "V's" side of the discussion than that other Nick ;) , I really believe that consultants - especially SBS consultants have to do both. Sometimes they're going be a "~'s", and other times, they're going to be "V's" (if this sentence doesn't make any sense to you, check this link) . In fact, there are times when they're going to be in both camps, depending on the customer that they're serving.

Whoa! Wait a second, what? Yes, that's right.

Every customer is unique.

Even if your customer systems are virtually identical (and even among SBS installs, you'd have a hard time convincing me of that), you have to treat each situation as though it's something new. Now, granted, you're going to be a little more confident after deploying 2003 SP1 (or whatever) on your tenth SBS install, than you will be on the first. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take the same precautions as you did during the first three installs. And if you're not putting the effort into things, than, at least in my opinion, you're doing your customer a real disservice! And you're also doing your employer a disservice by leaving potential revenue "on the table".

That being said, I have to live in the real world too. There are situations where you're not going to have the opportunity to "do the right thing", when it comes to testing and validation. Some customers just aren't going to pay for that effort.

When that happens, it's good to keep in mind that all of your customers are important. Just don't put the best ones at risk dogfooding/testing/validating when you could be using your less-than-best customers for the validation effort.

So, to bottom-line it for the consultants out there... Don't take shortcuts. It puts your customer at risk, and it impacts your revenue streams. Oh yeah, and make sure the people paying the lion-share the bills are getting the benefits!