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Who Owns Deployments - Dev or IT?
txpenguin asks: "I am IT manager for a small software company. We host several generations of our applications in a fairly complex environment. Our systems are very much inter-dependent (clustering, replication, heavily loaded, and so forth), and bad changes tend to have a domino effect. Additionally, it seems that there are always those who need to be 'in the loop', but aren't aware of changes which affect them. There is a constant battle between IT and Development regarding who should handle the deployment of new code releases and database schema changes to production systems. Dev doesn't understand the systems, and IT does not know the code well. How do you handle this at your company? What protocols seem to work best? Can there be a middle ground?"
These kinds of things where there are two opposing sides always have the same answer. Unless one side is teh debil or something.
You have to compromise. That's it. Middle ground. There are no other solutions to or ways around this problem. As you describe it, each side has access to and knowledge of half the problem. Half plus half is whole!
So, meet with the guys in Dev. If you want to be beaureaucratic and official about it, create a "deployment team" consisting of an equal number of members from each side that will sit down, discuss, and supervise all necessary changes to production systems. Hell, send someone to a project management class if you need to.
Now, the obstacle you're likely to hit is office politics. People won't want to listen to others and/or won't want to give up their turf or allow others on it. Too bad. To place how serious this issue is in overcoming the political terms: everyone in both departments needs to be cooperating or unemployed.
So there you go. Just like any other relationship, business or otherwise: sit down and talk it over. Problems solved!
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IT should own the deployments.
Assuming the dev department does their job well, a deployment would not require any of the dev department's skills.
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Plenty of other posters have pointed out that you sound a like an operation that is a bit small for the full Software Development Process. However if you're asking I suspect you're a growing company, in which case you need to get a Process in place, and soon or you will experience the full agony of a chaotic IT environment. (NB That's where I work now - I've worked sane places too) Fairly typical Process: 1. Dev receive Requirements and Defects from the Business, and code to them, unit testing their code (). 2. Code is delivered to Operations with a 'Release Note' or equivalent covering how to deploy the code to Environments 3. Operations deliver (deploy) the code to test environment(s). Link and Acceptance testing is performed - does it meet Requirements? are key defects resolved? Plus regression testing - does it break the existing system? Test sign it off if it clears these tests. 4. Operations deploy the code to the Production system on sign off. You inevitably end up with tensions in the Business vs IT, plus the divisions between the priorities of Dev, Test and Operations. Sounds like you are at the stage of not having any well-defined roles/teams for these responsibilities. I'll detail the Operations breakdown too. Operations: As others pointed out this breaks down into various teams. DBAs, Sysadmins, Change Management, Release Management, Operators, depending on your site. Operations are responsible for the stability and smooth running of the Production system - they must accept change, but control it. Since I work there, and you specifically address the subject, I'll detail Release Management too Release/Change Management Usually end up the Gatekeepers on changes. They'll need to be familiar with the whole system, and resistant to the pressure they'll receive from all sides. They need to know what versions of code are where, and be able to reject bad code when it turns up, but be flexible enough to make sure Test have something to test. They need to be experts on everything your IT does. No jobsworths here, and good generalists are rare. Since you'll inevitably go through a period of chaos if you are growing I'll mention that staff turnover here is very high - unless you get in contractors, and pay highly for them. The Change Management role, sometimes covering the Release role too, is to track changes and know who they impact, and be able to prioritise changes. If Release and Change roles are separate, CM is closest to the business. Hope that helps.