Development environment on a separate domain !!??

  • Our management wants to move our development environment

    to a separate domain. They say it's good to isolate it so that unauthorized users can't access the reports....?

    (Maybe because no real security model is implemented in the company. All developers access all SQL Servers with "sa" account, the main financial application that we build reports for - runs under SQL Server account, no Windows Authentication whatsoever...)

    So basically we will have to forget about our desktop applications and

    do all the work through Remote Desktop...

    I think it's a really bad idea.

    i spent a lot of time of customizing my desktop

    to make the development faster.

    I have a lot of utility programs, scripts, my Microsoft Office is customized

    and is inline with 95% of the users in our company (same version, same patches, etc. -

    It is very important when it comes to exporting reports to Excel and testing them)

    I feel like a really bad decision is going be made that will impact all our development work, our productivity.

    I am going to talk about it with out Project Manager

    but need a big "pros and cons" list to support my argument.

    Any good suggestions?

    Thanks,

    Robert

  • Pros, you can upgrade dev machines and easily move to other/new developers. You can work at home or remotely without changes.

    Cons - bandwidth needs to be there. If there are network issues, you can't work. The ways in which some keys work through RDP isn't the same, so you might lose some productivity. Upsetting developers never helps them code better, so I'd note that this change, while disruptive to development while it's implemented, will continue over weeks as developers adjust.

    I'd also note your security issues are still issues here.

    An alternative might be to use local VMs on your machine that are joined to a separate domain, that way you still have your own workstation.

  • Thanks Steve.

    There are good arguments.

    I wrote them down.

  • There are probably more, but I'd make a rational argument that part of the reason schedules are missed is because developers are not allowed to develop comfortably. They should have some tools to make life easier, and as few impediments to working as well.

    However developers also need to understand they need to work within some process. They can agree on it, but they need to ensure they include security, logging of actions, version control, etc.

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