The Next Big ITSM Evolution (pt.2) - An “Environments Service” or just a pile of under-utilized hardware and software adding to the cost base?
Following on from my previous entry I wanted to highlight why development and test environments tend to be a problem area, a root cause analysis if you will.
Rather than looking at some of the symptoms that we see that challenge the on-going operation of Environment type services I think it is important to go back to the moment of birth. The picture I am going to paint is a worse case scenario, but elements of this situation haunt all major development and test environment deployments.
The birth tends to be a painful process. Usually a large development project comes along with the objective of developing some major piece of software. At some point in the process they realise they need some sort of an infrastructure platform. They have money and in a bit of a hurry they get a few servers into the data centre, hook it up to a network and some storage and dump some software services on top.
The developers then hack around a bit, get it all working, go through a few test cycles and deliver an application or service to the business. In this frenzy, or should I say, highly controlled project delivery environment, on time delivery of change is the priority. Once the software has successfully been released into the Production environment the work stops, and most likely the budget has been burned.
For this reason, projects rarely clean up after themselves and indeed there is little short term incentive to do so. What they therefore leave in their wake is a large amount of hardware and software, probably far more than is required for the odd bug fix and for which there is no ongoing budget to support or maintain properly. Releases and fixes still flow into the Production environment and some or all of the development and test environments may be left behind in terms of release updates and patches.
This then leaves the next poor unsuspecting soul that wants to deliver change to come and make sense of it all….
