Hello there... I'm opening this topic, not to find a solution or the "correct" way of doing things but rather having a sysadmin gathering, were we can all tell our stories.
Many times in the past I faced the issue were an application written by an internal developer on my company, had short documentation or sometimes no documentation whatsover. By documentation I'm referring to the actual installation, configuration and backup plan of the corresponding application, that is going to be used for deployment/maintetance purposes by a sysadmin.
Now, there are times that the application that was written was completely crap, which adds more headaches to our profession, especially if this is combined with the lack of documentation.
There were times though, when I was completely strict with the developers and I was basically demanding documentation in order to take the responsibility to deploy his software and there were also times, where I've also tried to help him with the software (I'm coding as well) and the documentation, before I would proceed to the actual deployment. To be honest with you, most of the times if not all, I've regretted doing the latter... We can go back and forth with this because it involves numerous factors like the actual motivation from both sides, the working environment, company policies and so on.
Most of the times, this was translated by the managers as a "communication issue". In my experience, it is either lack of knowledge from the developer or the sysadmin or (most of the times) not being responsible (or both).
There's no communication problem or a war between those two professions. In fact I love both and I think that in our field you have to be able to understand various fields, especially as a sysadmin and less as a developer but either way, you need to be able to comprehend or have the will to learn different kind of fields.
Any personal opinions/stories are welcome. Obviously technical policies on what you "demand" as a sysadmin when it comes to install/maintain an application (especially if this application is written for the corresponding company), are welcome as well.
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