Unscheduled release principles

Sennen releases preventative maintenance and planned upgrades according to the sprint/release schedule.

Thus occurs on a 3-week schedule at the same time (8-9pm UK time), unless otherwise communicated. Usually there is between 5-15 minutes of expected downtime. 

In certain cases, Sennen will need to release outside of these parameters. For example, this may be due to a more robust fix to a significant issue or a correction to a previous release. It is important that Sennen is able to deploy updates in these cases. 

Sennen will endeavour to communicate additional releases and gain approval from Power Users at each impacted client. In situations where this is not possible, if the following conditions are met, Sennen retains the right to push a deploy. Every effort will be met to ensure this does not inconvenience clients. 

General

- It is 'out of traditional working hours' for the key user groups

- Expected downtime does not exceed 15 minutes (highly likely it will be significantly less than this) 

- There is no known workaround to the issue in question and it is causing significant loss of functionality 

- There is a significant risk of a major issue occurring if the fix is not deployed OR there is a moderate risk of a critical issue occurring if the fix is not deployed 

Offshore specific

- There are no personnel offshore, and no plans for personnel to be offshore in the next hour

- Not resolving the issue(s) in question would impact offshore operations/safety 

To note: In cases deemed critical and as a last resort, Sennen may deploy a hot-fix that does not meet these prior conditions in order to address urgent issues promptly. We will attempt to keep any disruption to a minimum and communicate these actions as quickly as possible.