Devide and be Conquered

In the beginning life was simple: there were Analysts and Developers. Analysts acted as Project Managers if they needed to and Developers provided what administration was needed (system, network, database). What little administration was required was done in a timely manner, in response to the needs of the project. At some point in time a trend towards specialization took over. Suddenly we need Network Administration, Server Administration, Security Administration, Storage Administration, Backup Administration, Database Administration, Deployment Administration and of course the glue that holds it all together Administration Administrators. Today many IT directors in a large corporations are surrounded by an entourage of software administrators all working hard to make them as paranoid as possible about needing their skills.

This fragmentation has had some seriously negative consequences including increased communication, more dependencies, decreased agility, more staff and the ever popular process, procedure and paperwork.

The cost of supporting all these administrative roles has exploded. The upside is that it has created management roles for many. The downside is that it slows project progress. On a daily basis I hear developers cry some form of “WTF” or “I can’t believe this…”.

My view of Database Administrators is polarized. More so than ever before I view databases as an integral part of an automated system. DBAs who understand the details of the database engines and are willing to participate in developing a system are worth their weight in gold. They are in essence developers and an integral part of a development team.

However, there is a special breed of DBAs who have blossomed in large corporations who don’t understand this role. Their authority comes from owning database permissions. They frown at the thought of creating or altering a table. Try “evolving” a physical database design in some organizations. How can you experiment when every change must be justified to a DBA who then will have you wait while they reluctantly schedule the change for you. 

Much of the large corporation inefficiency in software development comes from administrators who have been given too much power, and often take up adversarial positions against development teams.  This isn’t something that can be fixed easily because there’s often a deeply rooted culture of control and change prevention.

It’s no wonder that so many large corporations outsource their major projects.

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