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Who Owns Deployments - Dev or IT?

Posted by Cliff on from the custody-battles-are-always-nasty dept.

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?"

2 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Middle ground by Southpaw018 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    --
    ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
  2. Re:Speaking as a developer by zrq · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    Absolutely agree.
    If the developers do their job correctly, then a release should include a full set of install and migration instructions for IT to use.

    If IT do their job correctly, they should test the install on a separate system before deploying it live.
    If the install does not work 100% first time, don't tweak it, send it back.

    If the developers complain that IT didn't follow the instructions correctly, then the instructions were wrong.
    Send it back to the developers to write better instructions.

    If all goes pear shaped on the live system, IT should have a full set of (tested) instructions on how to rebuild the system from scratch.
    If the developers can't supply those instructions, then you don't know what you have.

    Ok, I know this is nice in theory and difficult to acheive in practice, but both teams should be working towards this as their goal.