the philosophy of continuous deployment
TRANSCRIPT
The Philosophy of Continuous Deployment
ScopePhilosophy and culture change
Not a technical how to
Deliver more features value, more quickly for less cost
Improves
• Focus• Efficiency• Quality
Reduces
• Cycle time• Bureaucracy • Release overheads• Bug/feature management• Cost
Traditional CultureYou release what you testPhase gates and sign-off
Quality is the responsibility of Ops and QA
Can we do this faster?TEST, TEST, TEST
100% Unit Test coverage~75% Cucumber Tests (BDD)
Substantial integration tests in pre-prodDeployment Automation
Global Release Vicious CircleConfidence to release
is low despite automated tests
Patching changes into RC causes further delays
Delays cause more features to be added to
RC
QA fall behind on functional testing
Engineers become careless
Anxiety from Release Manager delays
releases
Difficult to identify cause of regressions
Change in Philosophy
What?De-centralisation of decision-making
Trust!Autonomy, Transparency, Accountability
Decoupled Architecture (SOA)
How?Clear definition of ownership
Shared responsibility for quality (not just QA)Culture of personal responsibility
Collaboration rather than phase-gates and sign-off
Production releases focus the mind
Behavioural Changes
CollaborationCollaboration with the operations team (DevOps)
Communicating about change impactUnderstanding business drivers
DecouplingReleasing features in small chunks
Pragmatic automated testingConsidering backwards compatibility
ResponsibilityCode is well-tested and production ready
Monitoring vital statistics (in all environments)When to back-out and when to fix-forward
Nuanced understanding of risk and QA Definition of Done == In production.
Change in TeamLess focus on points and commitment
More focus on output and why?Shared ownership of product and quality
Teams judged on effectiveness rather than velocity
Finally..It’s not “same same but faster”
You cannot solely automate and test your way to CDYou need to change your culture
You need trust and autonomyRequires personal responsibility and accountability at every level
You cannot leave it to engineering
