Prior to discussing specific errors, it’s critical to comprehend the underlying causes of the majority of problems we run into. Because technology has grown so complicated, educational institutions have had to establish information silos in order to comprehend and instruct it. Regretfully, they are a useful tool for managing technology inside an organization. Silos of information, however, get in the way of your aim of achieving optimal performance—that is, balancing cost, durability, and performance.
Information silos have resulted in subpar performance, finger-pointing across departments, skyrocketing prices, and/or disgruntled clients, as we have seen and witnessed. This typically has a significant effect on the reputation of a business and your application.
Here are 7 specific mistakes we encounter all too often:
- Suboptimal Resource Allocation: Without a clear understanding of the application’s requirements, the deployment team might either allocate excessive resources (leading to higher costs) or insufficient resources (leading to performance issues). Both scenarios are inefficient and can adversely affect user satisfaction.
- Deployment Failures: A lack of coordination can lead to situations where the application might not deploy correctly or even fail to deploy at all. For instance, developers might assume a certain environment setup that the deployment team isn’t aware of.
- Lack of Scalability: Developers might design applications assuming certain scalability features. If the deployment team isn’t in sync, they might not provision resources in a manner that supports this scalability, potentially causing system crashes or slowdowns during high-usage periods.
- Ineffective Scalability Planning: (different then a lack of) Without collaborative discussions, developers might not design applications with scalability in mind, or they might make assumptions that don’t align with the deployment team’s capacity planning. For instance, a developer might assume that scaling up resources in response to increased demand is straightforward, while the deployment team knows that there are budgetary or logistical constraints. This can lead to situations where an application cannot effectively scale to meet user demand, leading to performance bottlenecks and user dissatisfaction.
- Security Vulnerabilities: If developers aren’t in sync with the deployment team, certain security measures might be overlooked. For example, developers might be unaware of security policies enforced on the infrastructure, which can inadvertently introduce vulnerabilities.
- Increased Troubleshooting Time: In the event of post-deployment issues, disjointed information and lack of prior coordination can make pinpointing problems challenging. This can lead to extended downtimes, affecting both performance and user satisfaction.
- Inefficient Cost Management: Without coordination, there could be unexpected costs. For instance, developers might design applications expecting them to run continuously, while the deployment team, aiming to save costs, might have scheduled resources to be available only at certain times. Such mismatches can result in application downtimes or unexpected cost overruns.
How to avoid the mistakes
It’s harder than you think, but it’s also easier than you think. The key to the answer is in appropriately adjusting the available human resources, not in any hardware, software, or technological advancement.
While their areas of expertise differ, infrastructure teams, developers, and programmers share similar objectives. The infrastructure group constantly wants data to be processed and moved through the system in a secure and easy manner, whereas the programming and development groups are always concerned with the applications’ performance. When an issue arises between two groups that lack trust in one another, the default response is to plot against the other group. To find out how to solve this problem, click this link.
Infrastructure administrators and developers must work together in order for modern, agile, and effective IT operations. This is not only a good practice.
At Protected Harbor, we have been working with company’s teams to create environments that are not only stable but scalable, faster and at a reduced cost. Contact us today!