What practice in a small IT department poses the greatest risk?

The practice of developers promoting code into the production environment poses a significant risk primarily because it introduces the potential for errors and bugs to directly affect live systems. When developers have the ability to transfer code from a development or testing environment into production without sufficient oversight or a structured process in place, it raises concerns about code quality, stability, and security.

In a small IT department, where personnel may wear multiple hats, the separation of duties is crucial to minimize risk. If developers are also responsible for promoting their own code, there may be a lack of independent validation or testing, which increases the risk of deploying problematic code that could lead to system outages, security vulnerabilities, or unintended impact on business operations.

The other practices, while they do carry some level of risk, do not inherently introduce as critical an issue as direct developer code promotion to production. For instance, business analysts writing requirements and performing functional testing are typically following a structured approach that focuses on understanding user needs and ensuring functionality meets those requirements. IT managers performing systems administration is common in smaller environments but can generally be managed through proper oversight and organization. Database administrators performing data backups, if done correctly, is essential for data integrity and recovery, thus reducing risk rather than contributing to it.

Overall, the lack