6 Steps To Successful Continuous Deployment Transition
Agile methodologies and DevOps can lay the foundation for continuous deployment, but there are several organizational, cultural, and technological changes that have to occur before they can be put into play. Here are six vital steps to take in your journey toward successful continuous deployment.
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In an IT universe that contains some companies still working on annual software releases, frequent software updates can be a competitive advantage. No discipline supports software updates on a more rapid schedule than continuous delivery.
The question for most organizations is how to get from agile -- or even waterfall -- to continuous delivery. The answer comes in meaningful steps.
Continuous delivery is defined by some as a process in which code can be released to production at any time. Others define it as a system in which software is constantly revised, with revisions pushed out to production as soon as they're available.
How often can those revisions occur? There are cloud service providers that talk of releasing scores of revisions a day.
Continuous delivery is part of a "continuous" hierarchy. The steps on the hierarchy are:
Continuous integration: Code is written, integrated, and tested within the development environment. Walls between the three functions are broken down to make one smooth, continuous process.
Continuous delivery: Software and component revisions are made ready for deployment on a continuous basis. The organizations might choose to hold those revisions for scheduled releases, but the gating factor is the schedule, not revision availability.
Continuous deployment: Every revision is deployed as soon as it's delivered. The code pipeline never shuts down, because automation processes take care of all the deployment steps.
Continuous deployment is an important trend in enterprise IT. According to IDC, by 2018 more than 60% of enterprise apps will use cloud-enabled continuous deployment as their delivery mechanism. This means that companies not using continuous deployment could easily find themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared to those pushing updates out the door on a moment-by-moment basis.
Not every organization is ready for continuous deployment. While agile methodologies and DevOps can lay the foundation for continuous deployment, there are significant organizational, cultural, and technological changes that have to occur before the code pipeline can be opened for users.
After looking at resources on the web and talking to many different IT managers and executives, I find that six steps stand out as critical for any organization that wants to get to continuous deployment.
[See 10 Ways to Win at DevOps: What IT Pros Need to Know.]
It's important to note that these aren't the only six steps on the path. You might think of them as landings on a staircase, or scenic overlooks on a longer trail. No matter which visual metaphor helps you, do realize that these are not optional. They are steps that every organization must take on the way to continuous deployment.
If your organization has already made the move, I'd love your take on the steps in this list. Are there others you see as critical? Do you think that one of these is oversold? Let me know -- the comments are open on a continuous basis.
In the same way that DevOps involves more than just the development group, continuous deployment isn't just about coding. Design, infrastructure operations, testing, and deployment teams have to be on board and working together if continuous delivery is going to occur, much less succeed.
The first step in having everyone work together is having a shared understanding of why continuous deployment is important to the organization. Once you know why continuous deployment is important, you can set every group to determining how they're going to contribute to the successful implementation of the process. Setting rational goals starts with a clear understanding of why you're going to the trouble -- and the benefits you want to achieve in order to consider the transition a success.
This shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone, but if you're going to have a new software release every 25 minutes, every group in the design, development, and deployment chain is going to have to work together as a seamless whole. Getting everyone working together won't happen without solid communications that encompass every member of the team.
It's important to note that communications in this context doesn't just mean something like Slack that will allow team members to chat with one another. The communications have to encompass repository and versioning facilities, trouble and feature tickets, and feature- and bug-tracking. You can choose the components that fit best within your development or management frameworks, but you can't do without rock-solid communications if you hope to have continuous deployment.
When the hierarchy of "continuous" was laid out in the introduction, it's not only that one type of operation followed another. Each variety of continuous operation builds upon the one that came before. You can't have continuous delivery without continuous integration, and you can't have continuous deployment without first having continuous delivery. There's really no way around it.
Now, this isn't to say that you must succeed with continuous integration and run with it for a year before you attempt continuous delivery, and so on. You must, though, have all the components and operations for each in place as a prerequisite for moving forward. If you're looking for a rational way to stage your organization's transition to continuous deployment, pausing for a period of reflection at each level is a useful way to proceed.
When you develop, test, and deploy software and services there are a bunch of repetitive steps that must be taken. If you have to run through them once a quarter it's a pain. If you have to run through them 23 times a day, the pain becomes unbearable.
The solution for painful repetition lies in automation. Your solution can be summed up in three simple words: Automate, automate, automate. If it's possible to automate a process or procedure, you should do so. If it takes time and effort to make the automation happen, think of it as a worthwhile investment. There is no process too simple to automate and no step too small to benefit from solid automation. In case there's any confusion, just remember "automate everything," and you'll be on the right track.
It may seem hard to imagine, but there are development teams that build software with no regard to what it takes to test, deliver, and deploy the application. Those are, they seem to believe, problems best left to other teams. In the world of continuous deployment, they couldn't be more wrong.
Sure, it's possible to refine code and add all the "glue" to make an application production-ready, after the primary developers have finished their work. If you're stopping at continuous delivery, you might even be able to get away with that. But for continuous deployment, you need as few roadblocks as possible between design and deployment, and an application that isn't production-ready is as large a roadblock as exists.
Make sure the developers know what it takes for an application to be production-ready, and then make sure they're delivering code that meets the requirements. Kick over the roadblocks and you'll find deployment comes much faster and more easily.
There are development processes that require each change to go through multiple levels of permissions and revision checks, and that demand that a rigid hierarchy be followed for any alteration to existing code or procedure. You don't want to get sloppy, but if continuous deployment is your goal, you want to empower you team to understand the environment and to make suggestions and proposed changes based on what it finds.
There are development processes that require each change to go through multiple levels of permissions and revision checks, and that demand that a rigid hierarchy be followed for any alteration to existing code or procedure. You don't want to get sloppy, but if continuous deployment is your goal, you want to empower you team to understand the environment and to make suggestions and proposed changes based on what it finds.
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