At my company there are two of us that do the admin,dev, and server upgrades for Lotus Notes for the past 6 years. My companies new directive is for us to write the Domino server upgrade procedures and then someone in the ‘server room’ perform the upgrade without us. They want to control the production environment this way. I see good and bad in this. Mostly bad. Could I have some opinions?
Subject: Just curious what your opinion would be
Without knowing what your official roles are at your company, it is hard to give a definitive answer. Using best practices (COBIT), you should not be performing both a system administration and application development role. These should be segregated, with the system administrators being responsible for upgrades.
Without further information, I would be concerned that the people in the server room are not qualified Notes Admins. Even with written instructions, errors are more likely.
But, it is also a good control procedure to have written documentation.
Subject: RE: Just curious what your opinion would be
My opinion, since you asked… 
Do the people in the server room install software now? If so, they should have no problems.
The script for a Domino upgrades goes something like this:
Type Q
Run SETUP.EXE
Click Next
Click Next
Click Next
Click Next
Click Next
Click Finish
Reboot server
If something goes wrong, they pull you in to fix it as Tier 2 support. If it goes OK, you didn’t have to do any work. It allows you to spend your time on things that require your specialized expertise as opposed to running SETUP.
I know from personal experience how hard it is to let go… 
Subject: Just curious what your opinion would be
sounds real foolish to me
Subject: RE: Just curious what your opinion would be
Steven, If you read my response, you will understand you cannot make such a blanket response with the limited information he gave. There has to be additional context given.
Subject: RE: Just curious what your opinion would be
Thank you both for the response.I always document the procedures to upgrade, but to a level that I understand. Now I will need to take it further. Along with testing after the upgrade is complete. The server room employees do not have any understanding of the Notes environment, do not understand the domino routers, do not have access to e-mail databases,they will not understand any error messages that might come up on the Domino console,etc. We have the hub and spoke system here. Basically the smtp server, hub server, 2 e-mail servers, and an application server. Then a couple of other servers in their own domain all alone. Fortunately, late last year we took all but the last 2 servers to version 6.5.1. from version 5.0.11.
Now I need to take the final two servers from 6.0.1 to 6.5.1. This upgrade is pretty easy but no one will be there to make sure the other servers routers realize the server is backup to router e-mail,etc. Little problems like that when a router doesn’t realize for a while that the server is backup. But at least these two are keeping the same ip address and really will not require any changes in the configuration.
I was just curious of other opinions or if this is a trend that is starting. I have to flow with it whether I like it or not. Thanks.