Role: System Administrator

Description

An individual taking on the role of System Administrator needs a good understanding of the specific hardware and software components used on a project, and the possible dependencies between these components.

Related Information

This section provides links to additional information related to this role.

• Concept: Development Environment

Staffing

In larger organizations, people assigned to this role typically belong to a resource pool outside the project, and will be responsible for supporting the development environment in multiple projects. This may raise issues with regards to availability of the desired resources.

Skills

In-depth knowledge of the development platform’s operating system(s), network, and mechanisms, such as security and distribution, is required. Problem solving and fault diagnosis are also key skills for this role.

Role assignment approaches

The System Administrator role can be assigned in the following ways:

• Assign one or more staff members to perform the System Administrator role exclusively. This is a commonly adopted approach and is particularly suitable for large teams or where smaller teams will “time-share” centralized administration resource.
• Time-share a pool of System Administrator resources across multiple projects. This is another common approach used in large organizations in which an IT department is resourced separately from-and the resources “leased” back to-each development project.
• Assign one staff member to perform the System Administrator role in conjunction with another technical role such as the Implementer or Integrator role. This approach is suitable for small to medium sized teams, although it often results in reduced productivity in the both role assignments which you will need to allow for.
• Assign each team member in the development team responsibility for their own administration activities. While this approach can be suitable for smaller teams, this will detract from focusing on other activities, and often results in lost efficiency through duplicate effort.

Further Reading

See the references page for further information.