August Monthly Staff Series: Development Services

Hello readers! After a break for the Summer, we are back with another blog post on staff teams. This month, we have heard from…

Development Technology (Development Services)!

What does Development Technology do?

We play an ever more important pivotal role in the project portfolio of the directorate, we still deal with infrastructure (e.g. databases, Application server technologies) and system administration aspects of the work we do, but increasingly provide vital technical guidance when setting up/interfacing with our many cloud hosted applications. We can be involved in small patches to major upgrades through to automating new infrastructure builds from scratch and liaising with our colleagues in ITI where needed.

How does this work connect with other Application sections?

We work very closely with the software development teams to deliver the infrastucure/technical setup they require on projects and provide technical expertise and guidance to the project manager from planning through to delivery. It is important that we maintain a strong relationship with production services throughout the project lifecycle and we are also ready to help with any live issues which may occur. We are also increasingly virtual team members in what management like to call fusion teams, to ensure we maintain and improve technical standards across the division.

Are there any upcoming projects the team is excited about?

Excited is perhaps a strong word as we have endured a long journey to the start point, but what we will be introducing to the section this year is an orchestrated container environment. This will provide the platform to allow us to manage and deploy our applications more efficiently whilst still focusing on security, flexibility and performance. We look forward to deploying a live application in this environment later this year and building the service from there. The lack of devolution of common, repeatable tasks has often held our teams back, we plan to address that with this platform.

Are there any special/hidden talents members of the Team have (if so, what are they)?

Too many to mention, if we told you they wouldn’t be hidden.

If you could take a guess, how many cups of tea/coffee/hot chocolate does the team get through on an average day?

We don’t monitor tea/coffee drinking, perhaps AI will!

In a sentence what makes Information Services Group Portfolio great?

The 10 individuals in the team, make it great always willing to help each other to deliver solutions, we have technical experience and brilliance in abundance but our values and willingness to help improve the technical landscape makes the difference.