The Perils of Lackadaisical Updates

by lg0p89

Organizations differ in size.

There are the massive Multi-National Corporations (MNC) and the Small- and Medium-Businesses (SMB).  The MNCs could be the familiar General Motors or Royal Bank of Scotland.  The SMB may be the mom-and-pop business or the community banks.  There is a wide variety to choose from for these.

There is a natural economy of scale with activities.

There is a cost with any activity, such as pushing updates or implementing a new system.  These costs may be comprised of not only the direct costs (e.g. if you have to purchase the software), but also the indirect costs (e.g. the labor of installation and the overhead attached to the people doing the work).

If there are very few users to push an update to, the cost per user is higher.  For instance, if the cost to push a patch is $200, and there are three users, the cost per user would be higher than if there were to be eight users.  Thus the more users, to a point, the cheaper the cost will be per user.

I note the "to a point" due to certain instances where the number of users require more personnel to do the work.  So the line showing the cost per user would be straight to a point and then slightly change when more people would be needed.

Think of it like walking up a mountain.  You are walking straight up the mountainside until you reach a plateau, when you have to adjust and continue up the mountain.

This equation, while simple, may not quite work as well for the MNC due to the number of IT workers involved across regions of the U.S. and countries across the planet.  There may not be the scalability with this that would be hoped for.  It's moderately clear that there is an economy of scale with pushing patches at once.  This is basically simple algebra.

Twist

This is not referring to Chubby Checker (from the wayback machine).

If the admin does one push for the patches, it seems as though it would in theory be less costly than doing the same push multiple times.  The cost, in terms of time and money, would naturally increase if you had to check every machine to see what version of the application was being run.

Reality

Recently, I was sitting at work trying to find something to do.  You know the drill.

You are in between projects and you don't want to open a case to get started on just yet.  I had heard of an issue for a few months where an application was working as it should and for another user it was not.

Seemingly, there was an issue here.  For all the users, the application should work the same.  If this is not the case, then there probably should be a red flag and an opportunity for a project.

For my disclaimer, no I am not the admin.

We received an email early in the afternoon re: the forms library.

This is where we stored the documents that are used frequently by the business.  One of these forms was a PDF where the users would type in a customer concern and forward it to the department that it affected.  As they typed in the issue, it was maintained in the form.  As it was sent, so was the information that was typed into the form.

So this was an interactive PDF.

It turns out there are numerous versions of Adobe floating through the business being used by all the happy users.  No one knew or still knows all the different versions that are being used.  The issue was that the older version did not support the function of sending the completed PDF form.

Solution

One would think, as there is an issue, it should be addressed in some format.

The scope would be to check all of the boxes (this is a small business, so it could be done within four days), verify which version was in use, and update if needed.  The second goal would be to see what happened so this would not occur again.  Seemingly...

Well, the plan is to do nothing.

All the while, with the sound of crickets in the background, the problem is not being addressed.  To fix this in the future would erode any economies of scale and the cost would increase exponentially.

To not fix this does appear to be the route taken.

Conclusion

When you have a project or updates to push, as we all do, it makes more sense to do these as needed across the board.

To ignore them appears to be foolish and only adds to the eventual cost and complexity to eventually fix this.

Then, of course, I would not have much to write about or you to read.