In IT, the assumption that “no news is good news” when it comes to production changes can be a dangerous practice for several reasons:
- Lack of Immediate Feedback: Not all issues caused by production changes manifest immediately. Some may only become evident under specific circumstances or during peak load times.
- Silent Failures: Certain failures may not produce obvious or visible symptoms, especially if monitoring and alerting systems are not robust enough to detect and report all types of issues.
- User Tolerance: Users might experience problems but not report them for various reasons—they may find workarounds, consider the issue too minor to report, or assume it will be fixed without their input.
- Communication Breakdown: The absence of reported problems doesn’t necessarily mean everything is working perfectly; it could also indicate a breakdown in communication channels. Users may be reporting issues that are not reaching the IT team.
- Inadequate Monitoring: It’s possible that the monitoring systems are not adequately configured to detect the problems, leading to a false sense of security.
- Delayed Reactions: Some stakeholders may delay their feedback due to their business processes, which can result in a lag between the deployment of the changes and the discovery of any issues.
- Complacency: Relying on a lack of complaints can lead to complacency, where ongoing vigilance in monitoring and testing is replaced by an unfounded confidence in the stability of the system.
For these reasons, proactive monitoring, thorough testing, and clear communication channels are essential in any IT environment, especially when making production changes. It is crucial to actively seek feedback and monitor systems rather than assume silence means success.