Keeping pace with agile software development
Related to my article on production teams, the relationship between IT and research and development can enter a very similar deadlock. Most of the time, research and development will feel slowed down evaluating new tools and libraries in restricted workstation environments. And a lack of support to getting their real IT problem solved: build environments in home directories of key programmers.
Our solution was to create an interface responsibility: one person, who felt responsible for administrative issues within the development team. Although he would commit to the regulations of IT service management, he was placed in the development team and reporting to the Head of R&D. This credit of trust was necessary to establish the environment we owed to mutual understanding, and never got disappointed. And yet again, it was the key to solve the majority of misunderstandings between IT operations and R&D.
As a key person, independent from daily IT operations, he was able to devote time, effort and communication to R&D issues. Yet, closely working together with operations team and understanding their prerequisites, he made sure, that any chosen solution would meet the requirements of IT service management. Thus, development team agility requirements were met, and experimental software or systems could be staged to live environment before roll out in mutual effort.
As a mere side effect, this person also shouldered most of release management more responsible than anybody I’ve seen, guaranteed for a Definitive Software Library with a passion, took a ton of workload and chaos off the shoulders of developers, maintained high quality standards for F&E systems, and soon became administrative power user inside of R&D without ever being called for.
Being appreciated in both IT operations and R&D, he played a big role in linking the two departments closely together. Both on the professional and personal side. All it required was an atmosphere of mutual trust, and motivation and effort came along with it.
