RE: If everything is working fine, why do PTF's?

That's one of the best arguments yet. This client is deathly afraid of being
caught unaware.

"The first rule of Tautology club, is the first rule of Tautology club."

:-)

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of CRPence
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 12:32 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: If everything is working fine, why do PTF's?

On 05-Dec-2013 07:08 -0800, Paul Nelson wrote:

This is a question I got from a client yesterday. I seem to recall
somebody posting a link here some years ago to justify staying
reasonably current.

He wants more than just the standard arguments about IBM insisting
that one be at a certain level, et cetera, et cetera. It went right
over his head when I asked him if he changes the oil in his car on a
regular basis. He lives in the city and doesn't own a car.

Please chime in.

How about the tautological expression "You do not know what you do
not know" and the expression "What you do not know can hurt you" to
express an importance for preventive care\maintenance of the system.
Effectively, the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is flawed,
because you *can not know* for sure "it ain't broke" if you do not
review for the available preventive PTFs.

One might suppose that defects producing Incorrect Output would be
obvious and result in an investigation for a fix, but unfortunately that
is not always the case; the effects of being /caught unaware/ can be
both embarrassing and potentially costly, especially if the preventive
fix had been available since ages ago. Oddly most people seem to hate
most, the defects that cause a hard-stop\failure-message, but that is
only because they are so visible in both effect and the obvious impact
to getting a request to complete. Those are my favorite defects,
because they /call themselves out/ to me. I hate the defects that I do
not notice until long after they have impacted me many times, and thus
the recovery is made extremely difficult; just how do I remember every
time I *might* have been affected, and then how do I detect the
condition even if I do recall!?