Project Quant: Prioritize and Schedule Phase

Yes folks, it's time for yet more patch management goodness!

Since our goal in Project Quant is to complete a first draft here by late June/July, I'm going to be posting all the draft phases of the cycle over the next week or so. As I've mentioned before, our goal here is to identify the steps of each patch management cycle phase, with any associated cost variables.

I felt a bit like I was drawing at straws to get into the details on this one, since the times & costs involved are pretty straightforward. You have to go through a prioritization exercise, match that to assets, then develop a schedule.

I think the main variables here are around the quality of your asset lists, patch and asset documentation, and so on. In other words, if you don't have a list of assets by value, it makes it harder to develop a prioritized schedule. If you don't have a lot of asset types or assets covered by the patch, you'll need more time.

Seems straightforward to me, but let me know what you think. Part of me wonders if we need to add a "meeting factor" for all the time many organizations waste trying to pull everyone together to agree on patch priorities. Seriously, we all know that can consume half or more of the time needed to schedule.

—Rich