You cannot ask a utility to have a quiet year. Delivery is continuous and small, planned around the seasons and the freezes rather than through them, and the weeks in which nothing may change are written into the plan before anything else is.
What we do here
The lines that matter most in this sector, and why.
Modernization
Small and continuous, so no single release is large enough to be worth risking during a peak.
Migration and cutover
Scheduled around the season rather than around the program plan, and rehearsed out of it.
Decommissioning
The old control path stays warm and recoverable until well past the first peak on the new one.
Two weeks nobody deploys
The freeze goes into the plan on day one, which is what makes it survivable.
Two weeks nobody deploys
The freeze is written into the plan on day one, which is what makes it hold when the season arrives and somebody has a very good reason to break it. Agreeing it in advance costs an argument once. Agreeing it in the moment costs the same argument every time.
What we plan around
| Constraint | How the plan absorbs it |
|---|---|
| Peak season | Freeze weeks agreed on day one and written into the plan, not negotiated in the moment |
| The room's trust in the wall panel | Earned back before it is removed, never removed to force the issue |
| Reporting obligations during an event | Which do not pause because a migration is underway |
| The room never closes | So every change is designed to be made while somebody is watching it |
Questions we are always asked
Four of them, answered the way we answer them on the phone.
What about storm season?
It is in the plan before the first sprint. Freezes are not interruptions to the schedule here, they are part of its shape, and a plan that discovers them in month four has already failed.
Can you work around a deployment freeze?
We work around several. Delivery is sized so that a change either lands well before a freeze or waits behind it, and nothing is left half-migrated across one.
What if the control room will not accept a change?
Then it is not ready. The best review we have had was a control room that did not notice the third and fourth releases, which is the standard we aim at rather than a story we tell.
Who is available during a cutover?
The people who designed it, on the night, with one named decision-maker per phase. Not a duty roster of people meeting the plan for the first time.
Case studies
Programs in this area, described by what they were rather than by who paid for us.
