[orangepenguin]

> "Perhaps the easiest way to avoid outages is to simply to make fewer changes."

The exact opposite is true. When a process happens infrequently, it's more likely that the people involved will make mistakes and overlook steps. The correct answer is to make changes more often, and to develop robust processes and automation around those changes.

[aledalgrande]

I think you are implicitly referring to change size too here: smaller changes are better. Can probably be included in "robust processes".

[einrealist]

Wanted to state the same. I get angry when I have clients talking about their "major release days" every three months and how its a good operating procedure to have this dedicated day to change all their systems at once.

Robust IT needs decoupling and small incremental changes. This will outperform any coordinated release scheduling in terms of reliability, if implemented correctly.