Super user powers in development environment?

Question

Is it too much to ask for when I ask the IT department to give my development team an environment where we can use whatever software that we can download without having to have security check those tools?

Of course, the software can be checked by security before deploying to Test, and the development environment can be on a VLAN that is not accessible from outside. This would greatly aid us by allowing us to use whatever open-source testing tools that we want.

I'm asking because we have such tight restrictions on the software approval process, and I hear of other teams that have an environment where they can configure their local server however they want and they can use whatever tools they want. What's the norm out there?

Thank you for any comments!

Answer 1

It really depends on who you work for, and what their policies are. If you work for an open-source shop, you probably have broad powers over your machine. If you work for the military, you probably have squat.

So there is no normative standard that you can point to and say, "See, this is how everyone else is doing it."

Answer 2

I would say that providing the development environment is isolated, then you shouldn't be restricted as to what you can install (within reason). Creativity can be severely hampered by policies!

If you are being restricted, what's to stop you from setting up a VM on your own machine, and putting whatever you want on that? Switch off the networking on the guest machine, and you should be free to download through your host machine and copy into the guest.

Answer 3

At one previous employer, there was a meeting for the company (around 17,000 employers) to approve software takes place every six months. If you're lucky, you get your request in the next meeting, and legal reports the meeting after that. Then IT has to approve it, which takes a few more weeks. All software must be tied to a specific business need for a project. Most projects last three months.