The traditional approach to software development involves development and operations teams working independently. The development team creates software that meets customer and business needs by focusing on new features and improving the user experience. The operations team is responsible for ensuring that the software application is available and reliable for customers to use in production environments, focusing on security and stability.
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt referred to this as “the core, chronic conflict” when organizational measurements and incentives across different silos prevent the achievement of global organizational goals. The development team prioritizes faster release of code changes, while operations teams resist changes out of concern for the application’s stability. While both development and operation teams are crucial to software success, their differing priorities lead to conflicts, ultimately resulting in dissatisfied customers and lost business opportunities.
Another common challenge in traditional software development is that a lack of representatives from one silo can lead to issues such as operations personnel not being available to deploy critical security patches in emergencies. In addition, siloed teams in development, operations, testing, and security lead to other inefficiencies, errors, and critical issues going unnoticed.
Finally, testing and security activities are often delayed until the project’s end, resulting in technical debt, where problems become increasingly difficult to fix over time, reducing future options for improvement and innovation. Moreover, the lack of automation in testing can lead to further delays and issues, as manual testing is time-consuming and error-prone.
This lead to dissatisfied customers and lost business opportunities, especially in a competitive market where fast time to market and experimentation are crucial.