I once worked with a team that wrote software related to payroll handling. One of the project managers began pushing us to institute a policy of not deploying on payday so that we would not “disrupt” our customers in case of a bug.

My response was, “So is it okay to disrupt our customers on the other days?”

Of course not.

Be careful any time you’re tempted to institute a “no deploys on X day” policy, whether X is payday, tax day, game day, or Friday. Such a policy is implicitly saying that quality standards are lower on some days than others. Instead, strive for high quality and high confidence every day of the year.

If you decide that such a measure truly is necessary, make sure it’s temporary, and that you have a specific plan in place to remove the no-install-day policy.