How can you jump on the Continuous Delivery bandwagon?

Consultant’s Notebook: The Case for the DRF

If you are working in ICT, there is a big chance that you will find yourself hearing buzz words like continuous integration, continuous development, continuous delivery, extreme programming. During the last two years, it is evident that there has been a wide adoption of this concept in most organizations. It cannot be denied that the advantages of Continuous Delivery have significantly impacted businesses and companies in a positive way and it is only a matter of time when this becomes the new normal.

Advantages of Continuous Delivery

From a business perspective, it’s hard not to see how continuous delivery can improve sales processes through faster time-to-market, reduced risk of releases and overall reduced waste and cost in different stages of the software development lifecycle.The question is not about who needs Continuous Delivery, rather how can companies jump in on this bandwagon?  This is where the Delivery Rationalization Framework(DRF) comes into play.

DRF: an assessment framework

As an assessment framework, the DRF provides the necessary structure to identify areas of improvement and pain points within the SDLC of any organization. For consultants like me, the question is always where do we start? The DRF gives us exactly that; a starting point from where we can open the table for discussions, a place where we can perform quick scans and deep dives in order to get a better understanding of the situation.

Knowing is winning half the battle

As a cliche goes, knowing is winning half the battle.  The DRF positions consultants to provide a pragmatic observation and a more objective analysis of current processes from the baseline assessment.  By taking into context relevant attributes of processes rather than the process itself, consultants are able to extract not only the obvious tooling limitations and process pitfalls, but it also zeroes in on organizational traps that could have potentially impacted previous decisions. Exposing these small, but critical areas in the process enables organizations to make small changes with big wins. This is the advantage of the DRF – not to change the game completely, but to equip consultants in setting up organizations for success, beginning with small structural steps that could lay the groundwork for better processes, clear communication lines and potentially more resilient tooling. Interested to learn more about Continuous Delivery and the DRF? Stay tuned, we’ll be posting regular updates!