I think we work in very different environments. In my experience it is not at all unlikely that new code can be rolled out, but a potential problem won't be noticed or a basic question will not arise until a week later. This is particularly true for applications which (like much stuff I get to support) are used on a monthly schedule.

Allow me to explain. Bonds tend to pay on the 15'th, 20'th, and 25'th. Most companies in finance have to mark their portfolios to market on the last day of each month. Where I work, these facts set the basic rhythm of life.

An ideal rollout therefore works like this. First week of a month it can be tested by end users. You try to do the upgrade that weekend. On Monday people any needed cleanup and further configuration has to happen. A week later developers hopefully have nothing to do, but they need to be around for any questions that might arise. Even if it is just a question on how to type a command. Or as major as having your database get unacceptably slow when everyone is hitting it at once.

So when I said a week later, I wasn't invoking Murphy and pulling a number out of thin air. I was pointing out the expected pattern of usage that I see.

Oh, and (in response to update 2) I work in a small company. In a small company people tend to do multiple things. Internal developers are not segregated from support. If you develop something, you might not field calls from customers, but you will receive feedback. And, of course, with internal products your users expect to be able to talk to you. After all if you added an option to a utility used by 4 people, who else are they going to ask?

As well developers need to be responsive to the unexpected. For a random example, it doesn't matter how technically perfect your XML news feed is or how long it has been working as it flawlessly. If the upstream provider slips banner ads into their feed (accidentally or not, doesn't matter) then the system needs to learn how to strip them. Now. (Hopefully you keep this kind of stuff to a minimum, but sometimes things happen outside of your control...)

Now in your environment these specifics may be irrelevant. But they aren't for me...

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