Cooperation between developers and operations in software engineering projects

In this paper we discuss how the cooperation between developers and operations staff is practiced. We have analyzed data collected from a focus group of experienced software engineers and project managers, as well as interviews from two case studies. Our position is that well performed cooperation between the development team and the operations team is crucial for successful deployment and operations of a new or extensively revised software system. The data shows that cooperation can be improved in several development activities like requirements engineering, system design, documentation, testing, training, and deployment planning. Likely consequences of poor cooperation in these activities are lower productivity in development and operations, as well as unsatisfied users.