Categorise changes raised for testing purpose

[praven0078]

Hi Forum

We have some changes raised (especially Custom Hotfix) within our Organisation that are aimed at fixing existing BUGs in the infra environment. a classic e.g. CheckPoint Firewall L2TP issue.

I guess, My question is "Do we classify them as Failed changes if the hotfix doesn't fix the issue at hand?" Albeit knowing that there's NO Test bed or Test environment to test if the intended hotfix will actually fix the issue and it purely comes down to a case of Trial and Error (Hit and miss) method.

Ideally, these are changes raised by our Infra team as Troubleshooting / Testing changes cos they or Vendor isn't sure if the HotFix would fix the issue or not.

Appreciate the forum's thoughts and comments on that

Thanks
Praveen

[tedderpd]

Hello Praveen - My advice is to categorize any change as 'failed' if the change does not accomplish its goal. By doing so, you'll be able to collect measures that may be beneficial in the future (for example, justification for investing in a test environment - each failed change today is impacting your live/production environment, which impacts your organization - how often, what cost, etc.).

[lcaputo]

I agree with tedd on this one, as you should be aware of the success rate of this hotfixes and, if you see that those are failing quite often perhaps you should change the way this works.