Re: Nationwide delivers banking services for about 12% of the UK.
Ex 1) An update needs to change data formats. For that you need data to be in a known state - and not changing - while the upgrade and testing process run. So you have to stop all processes that change the data.
Ex 2) A code change is being applied that needs a restart of the process. New program does not play well with old program so all copies need to update at same time. Even more fun if multiple programs needs to change
Ex 3) Upgrade of entire application suite applying multiple code and data changes all at the same time, changing every executable of said application suite across multiple hosts at the same time, quite often the entire DB and sometimes even moving whole lot to new hardware and OS version.
I'm sure there's many other examples.
So while you're complaining that you couldn't check your balance for a few hours, a whole bunch of techies have been working all feckin' weekend (plus a dry-run or two that you don't see), and when something unexpected happened not only did they have to fix the problem they also had to contend with a bunch of PHBs getting on their case.
AC cos I do this myself and certain PHB's don't like suggestions that things don't always go entirely as expected.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
