Rude Awakening in Product Management

2.9 version of application was running in production and 3.0 version was on final stage of engineering development but, I was not comfortable releasing 3.0 over the 2.9 version to production because 3.0 version was complete facelift of the application comprising new colors, total new navigation system and new modules etc. I had concern on its acceptance by user despite its strong aesthetics and new features because of user habit developed in a decade.

All the business stakeholders got convince by my thought for not making big bang release of 3.0 and taken decision to have 3.0 version GO LIVE as beta release in a separate web server with new URL having it directed same DB as of 2.9. With new strategy, code and SPs had to be compatible for access the same database from both web old & new applications.

This move was successful and 3.0 version continued to be enhanced based on feedback in beta however 2.9 version supports never stopped.

Time gone by and we had released 3.2 version in production with more features and modules. Since it has been almost 3 months having 2.9 (old version) up and running in production, so we have taken call to turn it off and we did it with enough notice to application users and our clients.

Since 3.0 release comprised many new business rules implemented on it and new features in application were bound to bring many enhancement requests from end users. Requests for enhancement grown to decide upon another release over 3.1 to address all the requests

Turnoff old application running on main production URL and route to new application server

As planned notification to users, we had to turnoff old application, so taken action to route main production URL to beta site (new application) however it was done in few minutes and verified by all the engineering and operation users in India but on start of US business hours, it was noticed that clients could not login to application through production URL after DNS routed to new application server. On further analysis we found re-direction of main production URL to main server from previous server had issues with URL to IP mapping. This was due to delay in propagation of new IP for main production URL to all DNS servers globally. As a result, IE was unable to resolve IP on global user login. We had no choice to re-direct URL to old IPs as an contingency then found user were fine with new application in main production URL until changes are completely propagated globally for DNS update

Lesson Learnt - Propagation of new IP for URL to all DNS servers globally takes around 24-72 hours.