Web Development·12,052 discussions

Web Development – Part of IT?

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I have an interesting situation with a new web development position we are hiring for. We are a small company so many of us wear multiple hats. After fighting for the approval to get a person hired for the IT department to help develop our website, I am suddenly informed that this person will not be reporting to me but to another team that works on analytical software development, based on the fact that it is software (web) development, and that should not be part of IT. Am I being power hungry or does software development fall under a different department other than IT?

Samuel

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It can

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

Software development can be a separate portion of the business. However, in small companies, software dev and IT are usually one in the same for simplicity.

Web developer position looks like software development to me.

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I would definitely put web page development in a software developers’ group, not a system administrators’ group. It seems self evident to me. A web developer will interact with system administrators in exactly the same ways as other software developers. Any software developer may present requirements for their project to the system support group to install specific development or run time tools, fonts, directory structures with specific access parameters, et. al. I can see no difference between web development, database administration, and in house application development.

This can actually be good for maintaining a robust computer environment. Software developers typically do not have the broad view of system configuration requirements that the system administrators are likely to have. The two groups typically have very different values and goals. The software developers typically maintain a very narrow view of the computer systems on which their project will be developed or run. They may be inclined to make rash decisions based on their project requirements without regard to maintaining the computer function required by other people. This is where the system administrators can protect the system function from damage by rash decisions made by software developers. If the software developers require the participation of system administrators to reconfigure the computer systems then the system administrators have the opportunity to evaluate the change requirements and discover potential problems that could arise from making the changes required by the software developers.

For example, let’s say that you have already got some critical applications in place. These applications run with a particular version of Java virtual machine. The web developer wants to use a particular new tool that requires a new version of Java. The web developer doesn’t bother to consider that an upgrade to the new Java version may break the applications that are already in place and that require the current version of Java. Any software developer with system administrator privilege may decide that their project deadline does not permit them the time to research and test the new version of Java with the current application environment and may upgrade Java on his/her own. Now when the current applications don’t run properly you face end user down time that didn’t have to happen.

If the web developer were in the system administrators’ group s/he would almost certainly be given access to system administration privileges. That is a recipe for disaster. Having software developers and system administrators in different groups where the system administrators act as a check against rash system reconfiguration by the software developers helps to maintain dependable systems for the end users. You do not want to combine any software development activity with system administration.

Web Development – Part of IT?

In reply to Web developer position looks like software development to me.

I agree that software developers do not always have the broad view of the overall system requirements of an environment as you mentioned, but this is usally caused by their point of view. I believe, however, that this is another reason why its good to have this position in the IT department. It’s our job to make sure things keep running. Why not design things with that in mind from the get go. In any other department, the priority will be to just get it done. Then you end up wasting countless hours troubleshooting, maintaining, or shoe-horning the solution in to fit. That doesn’t seem as effecient or cost effective.

IT is also responsible for the implementation of new hardwre and software. Its not the developers who install and maintain this stuff. Larger organizations require the use of enterprise level management tools such as SAP, MAS 90, PeopleSoft, Oracle, etc.?it is the responsibility of the IT department to make sure these systems are operational and provide useful information. This inevitably requires software development to modify reports, GUI, functionality, work flow, etc. These teams almost always fall under the IT department, especially web application development teams, as more and more IT tools are moving to a ASP.NET model where both internal and external applications are run over the web. The line between software development and technology in this context very quickly disappears.

In regards to the soft. dev. guys having sys admin access. that is very easy to fix. Just because someone’s in the IT deparment doesn’t mean they belong in the administrators group.

Depends on size of company

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I think it all depends on the size of the company,if the company is big enough to have IT and Software development departments,which sounds like it’s the case here,then web development falls under software development.

Wait a minute, SMB with 2 IT depts?

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I sense you simplified this to get support for your point. Since small companies under 50 have IT departments of like 2 heads, I’ll assume your company creates and sells software as a product or supporting Manufactured Part of an Assembly. Indeed there are politics going on here as well. It appears you were not rewarded for your fight to get someone (and you did, congrats!). Web Site Development is like 25% of creating a web site. Perhaps there is a bigwig who knows this and is actually hiring for more of a Marketing or Sales slant. That’s what SMB web sites are for, except for companies who invest adequately in their site and create an after sales support area. I just picked up a great book about company politics off Amazon called “Provocative Business Change” by John A Honeycutt, so I have my business turf hat on right now.

Mix into that pot the fact that I work (programmer) for a retail company (2300 employees) where the web site is completely developed by the Marketing department. We have our disagreements, they require in-depth support (DBA, Infrastructure, etc), but they have their own budget and have to buy what the company needs themselves.

This got long, thanks for letting me vent.

Web Development is Software Development but…

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I’ll start by saying Web developers are software developers, but they can also be so much more, mostly depending on the size of the company and the size of the IT department.

Now when I say IT department, I come from a company that has one IT division with a Web department in addition to networking, development, DBA, and production operations.

I head up the web department and the development department is mostly PeopleSoft developers. Me and my staff are responsible for creating Web apps including the databases that go with them and specifying the setup of the web servers, so we cross from Web development to DBA to sys admins. That’s why we are in our own department, our skills span too many areas to fit in any of the others.

My point is that it really depends on where you are and where the skills are located to do the job.

For contrast, I’ve even been a places where the Web developers were part of the Marketing department.

it depends

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

As most of the posters have commented, for an SMB, it strikes us as strange that you have multiple “IT” function departments.

That being said, you may want to review the objectives of your own department and compare that with the objectives of the web developer position.

If it runs within your department objectives then most likely it should be within your department.

All applications development is part of IT

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

As long as we’re talking about applications development and not content or ‘master data’ creation, then it should be under a common IT management structure with all other technical functions that support the hardware and software for the business. .

Why is software development not IT?

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I curious if your software development doesn’t sit within IT – where does it sit?

We have had internal debates about whether web developers should be in the IT department (with software development) or in the communications team which is responsible for website content. Seems to come down to whther the job is mainly mark-up & graphic design (comms), or whether it involves some element of programming e.g forms database access (IT).

If your your ‘IT’ department is only responsible for operational / infrastructure issues then it is n’t the write place for a web developer.

In Engineering Dept.

In reply to Why is software development not IT?

Our Software developer is in the Engineering dept. to work closely with the systems that our engineers build.
However as of late. The managers are talking of moving our software developer to the IT dept. This is because the engineering dept. has been keeping track of support for the programs and has not set up a proper system to make sure everything is managed correctly when it comes to the software created. A problem the managers hope we can fix by bringing the developer into our department.

Its about management.

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

Regardless of the fact that the requirement for web development skills comes from your department, this resource should be placed within the team best capabable of managing their skills and the project(s) on which they are working.

It is likely that the team/department manager who looks after ‘analytical software development’ will be running a structure more suited to the requirements gathering and development process, and will have progress reporting procedures in place to ensure that the developer is using their time effectively.

Furthermore, when your site is complete, and is entering the maintenance phase, the software development group is best placed to:

1) Ensure that the skills for maintaining the site are transferred and shared within a team of competent developers.

2) Ensure that the project is effectively documented.

3) Identify other projects where this developer skills may be applied.

In short, Yes – you are being power hungry – unless you have considerable experience in manageing software development teams, leave development to the group assigned to this work and use them as a service to you.

Its about management

In reply to Its about management.

Great response. One of the reasons for fighting for this position in my mind is because our SAS programming department does such a poor job of managing the overall scope of software development. Nearly all of their time is spent on improving the efficiency or accuracy of their programs versus making sure it all fits in the grand scheme of things. Projects are not well documented, processes are unorganized and somewhat uncontrolled. Of course there are many aspects in which this is not the case but the overall picture is this way.

That being said, it is important for the company that this website developement is done correctly, securely, and positioned for growth. I have my doubts it will happen in the current soft. dev team.

If we are talking management, then it is safe to say that one does not necesarily need to have the technical skills required to complete the tasks but the skills to manage them. A good manager will determine the necessary tasks that must be completed and the proper methods to measure them, along with the other points you made. You don’t need to be a programmer to do this effectively.

Web Development – Marketing

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

The purpose of most websites are for marketing. Therefore (as is the case where I work) a website developer should be under the umbrella of the marketing department.

Between IT and Software Development though, a web developer has more in common with IT than Software Development. So what if Software Development is writing code? Doesn’t the IT department also do so?

The web developer has to work closely with IT, especially if hosting is done in-house. Even if hosting ISN’T done in house, often an in-house testing server with IIS needs to be set up, firewalls opened up, etc.

More important than all of this though, is politics. The political landscape of every office varies greatly – whether it’s social, strategic, skill based, clout, or even something completely out of left field.

We’ve seen it enough to know it’s true. Climbing the ranks of management sometimes has little to do with being qualified to manage.

If you think you have a good chance of pulling him to your side, go for it. But if the decision has already been finalized, then just let it go.

Software development

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

This seems to be a common view of a web developer around our shop particularly in respect to technical skills. Our IT department includes application development as well as the operational and infrastructure elements.

However, our web services team reported to Marketing, the senior analysts and the programmers. As well, they were a self contained unit – budgets, hw & sw acquisitions, server configuration, business plan etc. Our IT department just gave them a network port to plug into.

Recently the web services team was moved to the IT department and two thirds quit, including the senior analysts. We are now faced with an undernourished team with arcane and outdated technology and presure from marketing to maintain the levels of productivity they previously enjoyed. It has become a strain on the rest of the team – progammers and server techs – to keep this thing running, never mind ehancing and upgrading our web precence.

Sometimes, be careful what you ask for – you might get it!

It is

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

I believe that web development is apart of IT and I believe software development should also be apart of IT. IT has to support both of these things regardless of who makes them, especially in a small company.
If a website is developed for the purpose of relaying information and providing service and support to the companies customers then IT should be the department that handles the support for that website.
As far as I am concerned all systems that have important information funneled through them should in some way be controlled by the IT dept.

Part of IT? Yes … most of the time

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

Where I work at Interstate Batteries web development is part of IT. At a former employer, the web infrastructure, but not development or content was part of IT.

Where Is The Responsibility?

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

What really matters is where does responsibility for the web site lie?

If you are/remain responsible for the website, the person hired to work it should belong to you along with it. If you don’t get the person, the department that does should also get the responsibility.

Where is the responsability

In reply to Where Is The Responsibility?

Well said. Regardless of anything else, this holds true.

Customer Focus?

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

If we’re talking about developing the website then surely there should be a customer focus, marketing has already been mentioned, and I’d put your new guy where he’d be best placed to serve the business need, for your customers.

In a small company this may well be about which Manager has the better understanding of how to align this with your IT strategy and, as you saw the potential for the post in the first place, it sounds like you should be able to argue this case very well.

Reading between the lines there’s an underlying political battle here – so be careful what you wish for!

Been there Done That!

In reply to Web Development – Part of IT?

About 10 years ago the CEO decided that the website (Part of IT) was outdated and needed a face lift. So he turned content over to marketing, with IT providing the technical expertise. That went on for several years with IT (both sides) trying to satisfy the “ARTISTS” in the marketing department.

After several language upgrades, they decided that the “NEW” technology needed to be outsourced so we could take advantage of all the new things the web can do. A large budget increase and no new technology and we have a different website, but not noticably better, but with a yearly maintenance budget.

Since then, we have gained a CIO and split the Software Development and Operations functions into two departments. We are still waiting on the “NEW” technology in the website.

So having said all that. Outsourcing is one method of doing website development. It does not require the experience or the level of knowledge that application development does, but it is close. A really good website is dynamic, and that requires database integration, and that is programming in anyones book. At that point, it stops being script kiddies and is development.

The only operations functions are hosting, which is offsite for us now, and routing, which is a one off addition to the routing tables. So operations really doesn’t come into it.

If I had to do it all over again, I think we would have outsourced much sooner. You can’t please artists, no matter how good you are, since like developers (IR1), they never met another in their field whose work they like. Once you put a budget between the artists and the developers, it tones down the retoric to a business decision and it becomes less about style and more about return on investment and customer satisfaction. Where style matters, it is budgeted and paid for. Where it doesn’t, it goes by the board.

I would say that getting a CIO was the best improvement we have made to both sides of IT. It lets techs do techy things, and management concentrate on strategic business decisions. The interface between the two is the CIO, and all the late night worry sessions are in his ballpark now. Much less stress on the rest of us.

Having been on all sides of this issue, I can tell you that there is a trade off. When I developed web pages for the public, I was very protective of the database and would kill projects that opened us up to privacy issues. I was not as concerned with server stability, because we had people to backstop me on that. Which means that yes, I did occasionally screw the pooch and leave a hole in network security. But having good admins generally catch those things. Once we outsourced the web development, we lost all of the exposure to the public web, and that was a big plus, both on the network security and database integrety side. Hope this has helped.

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