Is Continuous Delivery Riskier?

I read an article in CIO magazine today “Three Views on Continuous Delivery“. Of course the idea of such an article is to present differing viewpoints, and I have no need, or even desire, for the world to see everything from my perspective.
However the contrary view, expressed by Jonathan Mitchell seemed to miss one of the most important reasons that we do Continuous Delivery. He assumes that CD means increased risk. Sorry Jonathan, but I think that this is a poorly informed, misunderstanding of what CD is really about. From my perspective, certainly in the industries where I have worked of late, the reverse is true. CD is very focussed on reducing risk.
Here is my response to the article:
If Continuous Delivery “strikes fear into the heart of CIOs” they are missing some important points.
Continuous Delivery is the process that allows organisations to “maintain the reliability of the complex, kaleidoscope of interrelated software in their estate”, it doesn’t increase risk, it reduces it significantly. There is quite a lot of data to support this argument.
Amazon adopted a Continuous Deployment strategy a few years ago, they currently release into production once every 11.6 seconds. Since adopting this approach they have seen a 75% reduction in outages triggered by deployment and a 90% reduction in outage minutes. (Continuous Deployment is subtly different to Continuous Delivery in that release are automatically pushed into production when all tests pass. In Continuous Delivery release is a human decision).
I think that it is understandable that this idea makes Jonathan Mitchell nervous, it does seem counter-intuitive to release more frequently. However, what really happens when you do this is that it shines a light on all the places where your process and technology are weak, and helps you to strengthen them.
Continuous Delivery is a high-discipline approach. It requires more rigour not less. Continuous Delivery requires significant cultural changes within the development teams that adopt it and beyond. It is not a simple process to adopt, but the rewards are enormous. Continuous Delivery changes the economics of software development.
Continuous Delivery is the process that is chosen by some of the most successful companies in the world. This is not an accident. In my opinion Continuous Delivery finally delivers on the promise of software development. What businesses want from software is to quickly and efficiently put new ideas before their users. Continuous Delivery is built on that premise.
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1 Response to Is Continuous Delivery Riskier?

  1. Pingback: Comment | 'Why I never want to build another MVP'

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