Umm... what? If you're suggesting that the maintenance is shorter because they've been leveraging the test server to address issues and such, then I totally agree with what you're suggesting- No, it's not a coincedence that the maintenance is shorter because of hte existence of the test server.
What I'm trying to convey is that it's NOT anything to do with the amount of 'stuff' in the update. They have had maintenances of varying lengths of time regardless of how much new stuff is in a patch.
Perhaps we didn't understand each other?