SDLC Deployment

Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Deployment

This major customer care organization was in the process of deploying sophisticated, web-based technology along with a significant number of daily deployments of legacy applications. Their processes suffered as a consequence of short deadlines and poor controls that became increasingly apparent when the planned deployment of the new, web-based applications platform loomed near. The platform’s complexity was an order of magnitude above their traditional approach and unpredictable failures in production had the business owners, understandibly nervous during scheduled, and unscheduled demonstrations to potential clients and investors.

In addition, to a complete revamping of the Quality Assurance organization’s performance metrics, based on my professional assesment and in conjunction with the CIO’s recommendations, steps were taken to bolster the roles and responsibilities of the IT Operations organization to allow it to restrict deployments of untested code and untried application platforms. A rigid line of demarcation was established between application and platform, and specific “clean-room” procedures associated with platform “readiness” and application deployment were created – to ensure proper accountabilities to both, Client Services and Advanced Technologies organizations.

Success was depended on Client Services, IT Operations, and the Advanced Technology Group having a broader business focus rather than seeing the overall requirements only in terms of their departmental role. The final result was a company-wide campaign that linked business models, technology, and processes together, in a coherent vision so that solutions were properly rationalized across all functions, and proper due diligence was done on all proposed business endeavors.

The resultant was known as a “Business Solution Architecture” a proper-precursor to the now, popular Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach.

The primary emphasis was developing a “clean-room” environment for applications and platforms which newly required media to be cut and installation to be performed only by IT Operations personnel, in much the same way as is done in high-integrity environments such as financial services. The network links between the production and development environments were “cut” to eliminate “hot-fixes” that inappropriately circumvented process, that had created “revenue-robbing” outages.

The overall effect was a pronounced improvement in the stability of the production environment, and a dimunition of management “overrides” for deployment – since the accountability for failure now properly rested with the business, rather than operations. Additionally, by stabilizing the new, sophisticated web-based platform (among, of course, other improvements), the company was purchased for well over 650 million dollars.

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