Continuous delivery automates code deployment to testing or production, ensuring constant readiness for release. It accelerates updates by integrating testing with each code change, making deployments predictable and on-demand, streamlining the software development cycle.
Continuous delivery represents a transformative approach in software development—one that grew from the Agile-software movement (itself a response to the limitations of traditional, sequential development methodologies). The shift towards Agile practices, motivated by the need for faster, more adaptable software development cycles, paved the way for continuous delivery. By integrating development, testing, and deployment processes, continuous delivery makes it possible for development teams to reduce the time and risk associated with delivering changes, ensuring that software can be released at any moment with minimal effort.
Today, continuous delivery has become a cornerstone of DevOps practices, underscoring a culture of collaboration, rapid feedback, and high automation. It leverages advanced automation for repetitive tasks (such as testing), facilitating the rapid iteration of software products. This approach enhances the quality and reliability of software by allowing for frequent, manageable updates while also significantly accelerating time-to-market.
Establishing an optimized end-to-end process using continuous delivery requires commitment to several key principles:
Streamlined processes are at the heart of continuous delivery. So, to ensure that these processes are facilitating the best possible deployment cycles, they need to be consistent and repeatable across all environments. Many organizations establish a role that helps to define the platform and processes that developers use to participate in continuous delivery.
Continuous delivery cannot exist—at least not in any effective form—without automation. Manual processes take time and are difficult to repeat, so organizations should commit to automate as much of the infrastructure as possible. This has become commonplace in testing code and code quality. With the advent of DevSecOps, the same automation is extending to help eliminate security vulnerabilities. This type of automation is now also extending into areas like configuration data management where policies can validate that configuration changes are appropriate. In regulated environments, the final governance step of change management can also now be automated when utilizing information from the tools used in the delivery pipeline.
The last thing a continuous-delivery organization wants is to have to start over when it becomes clear that something is not built correctly. Version control allows developers to track and manage all changes within the code, so that in the inevitable event that an issue arises with the most recent updates, they can simply turn back the clock to earlier versions. This creates a stronger foundation for continuous, high-frequency improvement.
Optimizing processes and taking care of tasks should become easier with time, because effective DevOps prioritizes the most difficult and time-consuming responsibilities to be addressed first. Front load the development cycle, and then worry about making everything else perfect. Agile planning has advanced significantly in this area with capabilities like roadmap, scenario and, big room planning and unified backlogs.
Similar to prioritizing the most difficult tasks, Agile organizations need to be able to address and resolve bugs and other issues as they arise. This not only ensures that products are continuously refined and improved, but it also helps decrease expenses by resolving problems while they are still in their infancy. Artificial Intelligence is highly leveraged in this field with AI Operations solutions becoming more predictive and helping to identify and resolve issues before users are impacted.
Continuous delivery requires everyone involved to be on the same page and working towards a common goal. In other words, an individual's responsibility towards the product does not end when their tasks are completed. This principle demands a cultural shift in terms of accountability. Some centralization of information here can help with collaboration. Data models that link the whole process from ideation to operation in production mean that everyone involved in the delivery can understand what has been happening and why.
In traditional development, different individuals, teams, or departments had much more compartmentalized tasks, and thus often had vastly different definitions of when a release was done. With shared responsibility comes shared objectives, and everyone involved should recognize that no feature is complete until it has been successfully delivered.
The iterative approach can lead to drastically reduced development timelines, but its true power lies in its ability to help businesses refine their products. By automating effective processes, cutting out or revising unnecessary tasks, and constantly resolving bugs and other issues, organizations create ever more repeatable, efficient practices. Automation is the key, and effective, powerful software releases are the reward.
It's often said that clients can either have something fast or something good, but they can't have both. Continuous delivery refutes this; supported by automation, streamlined processes, and a commitment to always improve, teams that employ continuous delivery deliver their services more quickly and with greater reliability and quality.
Any business that is in any way involved in software development should seriously consider continuous delivery. Here's why:
Continuous delivery enables teams to quickly verify software changes pre- and post-deployment. This agility reduces cycle times and minimizes the reliance on time-consuming manual testing—lowering the risk and bolstering confidence in the deployment process. The investment in automated testing, essential for CD, pays dividends by facilitating this swift verification process.
Because testing is conducted frequently and rapidly, teams are better prepared to catch and correct defects before they can grow into major problems. This early detection reduces costs while helping eliminate the overall risk associated with software releases.
Continuous delivery minimizes the manual labor associated with software releases, which then helps cut down on human errors and inconsistencies. And in the less-likely event that an error slips through, continuous delivery enhances the reliability and auditability of releases, making the process of rolling back much easier.
Continuous delivery helps ensure that software is always in a ready-to-release state. Operations teams can then focus on monitoring, upgrading, and continuous improvement, rather than being caught in a cycle of urgent fixes.
Continuous delivery tightens the feedback loop with customers, allowing for rapid collection and incorporation of user feedback into the development process. This responsiveness is critical for staying competitive, as it makes it possible for businesses to quickly adapt to market changes and customer needs, enhancing overall business agility.
Continuous delivery is integral to maintaining high-quality software releases. Through practices like automated testing and continuous integration, CD ensures that code conflicts are minimized, and integration issues are addressed promptly. This not only maintains a high standard of quality but also mitigates technical risks associated with software development.
Releases become simpler and less cumbersome, as developers are encouraged to make smaller, incremental updates to the codebase. This not only makes maintenance easier by quickly revealing bugs in new code; it allows for rapid identification and resolution of otherwise problematic production issues.
Continuous delivery fosters a high-velocity development environment, empowering teams to deliver value to customers at an unmatched pace. By making releases more predictable and reliable, this approach improves the overall quality of software. More than that, it enhances the customer experience by cutting down on downtime and offering more rapid access to new features.
On the surface, continuous delivery sounds and looks a lot like continuous deployment. But while they both are part of the Agile approach to software development, there are subtle differences between the two variations that are worth recognizing.
As described above, continuous delivery automates many of the processes involved in software development and empowers teams to make incremental, ongoing changes to products. But where continuous delivery does not automate is the final stage of approving the deployment to production. Changes made and pushed through to testing environments typically go through manual review and authorization as part of a scheduled release into full deployment.
Continuous deployment takes automation further, by automatically deploying updates either on a predefined schedule or as soon as code is delivered from the continuous delivery process. If code does not require a deployment window, then by automating change governance (where used) in a reliable way, developers essentially get direct access to production and can ensure that updates are going out regularly, without having to push them out the door themselves. This gives businesses increased capacity to release more deployments at any given time, and even takes a lot of the hassle out of major releases. For most organizations, the inhibitor to continuous deployment is the need for strong governance, for example, because of industry regulation. Implementing continuous deployment in these kinds of organizations is largely dependent upon the ability to effectively automate what used to be manual approvals, such as in a formal change management process.
Traditionally, before software could be released to the end user, it would have to go through large amounts of development, testing and revising. This waterfall methodology, in which entire products were developed upfront before being tested and then deployed, was extremely time consuming, and resulted in slow deployment cycles and a less positive user experience.
A core component of DevOps, and working within the larger context of CI/CD, continuous delivery came about as part of the Agile-software revolution. Rather than create complete packages all at once, continuous delivery incorporates all aspects of building code that could go into production while using advanced automation solutions for repetitive tasks like testing, and it allows developers to ship smaller software changes, at a more consistent rate. Under some circumstances, the code may go directly to production - something also referred to as continuous deployment.
This provides several key advantages for businesses and software vendors:
When developers release large-scale deployments, there is a lot that can go wrong. Continuous delivery limits deployment risk by focusing on minor changes that are easier to vet and troubleshoot, and that require less time to fix if they do not function as expected.
Rather than simply waiting on developers to decide when the work is done, continuous delivery allows application and project owners to easily chart progress by tracking software delivery cycles as well as deciding when and how to continue with deployment into production or testing environments. In some cases, it may be desirable to leverage the information gathered throughout the continuous delivery lifecycle within a Value Stream Management solution to understand the relative capabilities of teams and to help identify and remove bottlenecks.
When software deployments move through pre-established development stages, individual phases can take up a significant amount of time. Continuous delivery forces teams to build testing and fixing tasks into other daily processes, rely on automation in building, provisioning, and more to help shoulder the burden. This allows for fewer development phases, much less redundant work, and faster turnaround times. In fact, the hallmark of continuous delivery is that it produces software that can be released at any time—a notable improvement over the long delivery times of traditional software development.
When developers invest a great deal of time into building something, only to discover upon release that it is ineffective or poorly received, they are forced back to square one with very little to show for their effort. Shorter, more-frequent releases show up testing and other issues more quickly and allow the application users to provide feedback early and often, so developers can make course corrections where needed.
With reliable feedback throughout the delivery lifecycle, developers can improve and streamline their products, testing out features and ideas and cutting away anything that is unnecessary, ineffective, or that creates a negative user experience.
Continuous delivery relies upon automation to eliminate many of the fixed costs that have traditionally plagued software development. This means less of a cost investment upfront and through the development lifecycle, and an increased return on the costs that remain.
Development marathons and looming project deadlines have a way of wearing down development teams. Conversely, small-scale fixes and releases can be managed more easily and in conjunction with other duties. Continuous delivery not only creates a less-stressful working environment and helps prevent burnout, but it also allows developers to interact more directly with users and see exactly how their labors are benefiting customers.
The overall concept of continuous delivery is easy to grasp: Break time-intensive development processes apart into automation-backed small-scale tasks and releases. However, understanding the idea and knowing how to implement the methodology are two separate things. The following are vital prerequisites in making the switch to continuous software delivery:
The aforementioned waterfall approach to software development may still be deeply ingrained in the minds and processes of development teams. As such, making the cultural switch to DevOps and Agile development will require extensive planning and thorough training. If dev teams are not committed, then continuous delivery is not likely to succeed.
The cultural shift towards DevOps is one that will need to take effect beyond the confines of software development. Fast feedback loops and effective decision-making demand clear collaboration and coordination with leadership, so that everyone is fully aware of and committed to the right processes.
Fast turnaround times and pain-free software releases don’t do organizations much good if the end products can’t stand up to security or compliance demands. Thankfully, many of the same approaches to automation tools used throughout continuous delivery can be employed to help minimize the security risk that comes with deployment. Automated code scanning tools with policies determined by specialist security teams become a part of the pipeline. If automated change management is in use, then the successful completions of those scans become a part of the information used to automatically create and approve change requests.
ServiceNow IT management solutions are effective support for any organization’s continuous delivery initiatives.
Get started with ServiceNow DevOps solutions, using the power and accessibility of the award-winning Now Platform to accelerate software development and deployment, and bringing improved connectivity and insight into your existing toolchains. Employ built-in automation options to ensure that change creation, tracking, and approval tasks don’t create bottlenecks in your processes. Maintain a detailed audit trail from start to finish, minimizing risk and keeping essential data ready and available in a single, central location.
Then, go further; apply Agile principles to complex software initiatives using the ServiceNow Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) application incorporating visual dashboards, advanced portfolio planning, color-coded task prioritization, detailed planning and monitoring options, and an easy-to-access backlog of centralized SAFe stories, SAFe features, incident problems, and more.
ServiceNow is your partner in effective continuous delivery. Demo ServiceNow today and revolutionize the way your organization creates and delivers applications.