Continuous Delivery - The business face

In the last issue of Perspectives, we looked at Continuous Delivery, a set of techniques to reduce the time and expense of getting software through the "last mile" and into production. In this issue, we address some of the business aspects of Continuous Delivery. Trevor Mather, President and CEO of ThoughtWorks explores the impact of new technology and globalization on traditional business models and outlines the business imperatives that are driving organizations towards Continuous Delivery. Jim Highsmith describes a simple and powerful metric for measuring progress towards agility that can help an organization move closer to Continuous Delivery.

The discussion in the last issue between Martin Fowler and Mike Mason on the dangers of Feature Branching has generated a lot of debate. In response, we expand our argument with articles from Jez Humble and Sarah Taraporewalla.

Trevor Mather (President and CEO of ThoughtWorks), gives a brief introduction to Continuous Delivery at ThoughtWorks Live 2011, a conference on Continuous Delivery hosted by ThoughtWorks in London in May.

Release software on-demand, not on Red Alert

In a world where customers expect a mobile and connected 24x7 experience, businesses must adapt to a faster pace of change. The demand on IT is to become more responsive, releasing features and new, complete products faster, more often, yet with better quality and reliability than ever. With ThoughtWorks Continuous Delivery, we give you all that and more.

ThoughtWorks Continuous Delivery transforms manual, disconnected and error-prone processes to make enterprise software releases so fast and assured they are a non-event rather than a big event; so reliable, well-controlled and low risk that release timing can be placed in the hands of business stakeholders.

That's a strategic advantage for businesses that want to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition.

Download the Continuous Delivery brochure

Jim Highsmith Shortening the Tail
In Agile Project Management , Jim wrote a short section on a performance metric called "shortening the tail." The metric, tail length, is easy to calculate and reveals a lot about an organization’s Agile implementation. It is a learning metric because it focuses on a key tenet of Agile development—running, tested software. In this blog post, he talks about how the tail length metric can help organizations move closer towards Continuous Delivery.

Jez Humble On DVCS, Continuous Integration, and Feature Branches
In this blog post, Jez develops his arguments about feature branching, and suggests an alternative approach that avoids large amounts of release code accumulating on branches.

Sarah Taraporewalla Experience Report: Feature Toggling
Join us for the first of a three-part series on testing. Learn how repositioning testing at the heart of your software development approach not only builds in quality, but also creates value by striving to prevent defects before they occur, enabling developers to get feedback in minutes and regression test results in hours, and enabling businesses to adopt testing activities which are highly aligned with their goals.

Jim Highsmith Adaptive Leadership: Accelerating Organizational Agility
Leading agile organizations requires Adaptive Leadership that begins with understanding business agility and how practices like Continuous Delivery and a mindset of sustainable agility combine to create highly responsive IT organizations. Don't miss Jim Highsmith's talk at the Agile 2011 Conference, alongside some of the finest Agile experts, industry leaders, practitioners, and top authors from around the world.

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Jim Highsmith: Agile Manifesto has served the industry well
July 11, 2011 - As the Agile Manifesto approaches its 10th anniversary, SD Times is speaking to several of its authors to discuss the gathering at Snowbird, what perspective they brought to the meeting, and what they might do differently. The 12 original authors will reunite at the Agile Alliance Conference this August in Salt Lake City. In this installment, they interview Jim Highsmith, executive consultant with ThoughtWorks and one of the co-authors of the Agile Manifesto.

Implementing the power of Agile in IT
July 13, 2011 - The business of software has always been about deploying technologies to serve businesses. But over time the speed at which business requirements have changed has increased dramatically, leaving many business executives frustrated with IT inability to deliver solutions fast enough. In this interview, Sudhir Tiwari, MD, ThoughtWorks India, shares how Agile can help IT partner business needs.