Agile Web Operations

Photo by woodleywonderworks

Let's face it, compared to other engineering disciplines software development is just coming out of the stone age. Heck, I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for even suggesting that software development is an engineering discipline (though I have to admit the way a lot of developers go about their work, calling it engineering does seem a bit of a stretch). Real life is seldom black and white, but I'd like to describe the two basic camps below.

Serial processing through departments for Release X.Y.Z

Most of us have worked at a place like this and, unfortunately, most of us still do. You know what I'm talking about - a traditional shop running with the waterfall process. Each department spends months working on a feature that ultimately, not many people are thrilled about releasing.

 development is finished when the calendar has advanced to a mystical date picked out of thin air months before

 after "finishing", the QA department can begin testing and will find the bugs (after all, this is their job, right?)

 operations is generally the last to know about the new feature resulting in emergency architecture meetings, more compromises, and even more delays