as the saying goes ... at the end we do not regret the things we did and failed, but the things we never did.

From my experience most people forgot that mastering something needs plenty of time (years). One sign proving this fact is that you find a lot of books with titles like "become something within few weeks" or "the truth about ...". But receiving true mastership lasts for a long time. And this is true for handcrafting, education, martial arts, etc. To become a master might last even decades.

Does it sound only to me, like it is doing speed just for the sake of doing speed? Shouldn't iteration be something focused mainly on improvement? If speed is the motivator it may be that you do iterations for things which would not be worth to make a new version. Ending up in "senseless" versioning. Just to show that you are fast. It should stay like you iterate for improvements and of course you will not be afraid to go fast if you have a lot to improve and like to do it in smaller steps (not to let someone wait too long for an important feature). And I would not compare software iteration with car racing. Because at car racing exceeding the limit of control might end lethally.

By my experience the co-operation sysadmins and developers works best if they are put together in one team. Either as a release team or a project team. Because if they work close together they start to understand what the each of them is doing and why there is sometimes a gap in between duration of tasks. The simply reason for that is, that when they sit together in one room working on exactly the same scope they will start to talk with each other. And perhaps they will also share some time (like lunch or even some after-work event) with each other. So, mutual respect will grow automatically. Of course this will not work of all kind of people ... because you will still find some lone-wolves, who you do not want to miss because of their skills. But it is alway worth to try :)

Hi Jeff! Good to see comments back :) I want to join all the people wishing you and your family a safe trip. And I want to add that I hope that we will see your dancing performance afterwards :)