Since most of my maintenance is off peak hours, this makes total sense! Spending only 45 minutes of development instead of 6 hours with the trade off of 10 minutes downtime during off peak hours makes total sense. Thanks for the post with a relevant example.
This is something I've discussed with my teams on a few occasions. Performing updates to applications usually ends up consisting of a hacky "down for maintenance, back in 10..." page put up by hand.
It's because nobody really thinks about it until the last minute. That's kind of as it should be, since there are usually more important things to worry about. I think the "back in a jiffy" pages are fine, but if you want something a little friendlier, that's where Wrenchmode fits in.
Seems like every app I use has had downtime, heck, even Pivotal Tracker had some last week, so why is it something people disregard / ignore as a topic?
It really is a case where a little preparation can save you a lot of heartache when there's a problem or a big change to make.