Comments on: Beyond Continuous Integration … Continuous Deployment at IMVU and a tale from Pirum

By: Jeffrey Fredrick

Jeffrey Fredrick — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:49:32 +0000

James Shore said that short iterations are the dessert, the reward, of the xp practices. Continuous Deployment is clearly the dessert of making a serious and consistent effort in your testing and automation infrastructure.

By: Kane

Kane — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:37:23 +0000

@Harald, I would agree with you … but within some limits which I’ve noted below.

>Scrum focuses mostly on the software development process …

There is nothing within Scrum that limits you to software development. Certainly that is it’s historical roots, so a large part of the current literature talks about Scrum in this context. However, Scrum can (and is), being applied to whole organizations*.

The whole organization approach does indeed provide a much better sense of flow (as you’ve mentioned).

>without an organization which adapts and supports the idea of lean manufacturing, it is just an agile island in the wild sea.

I would agree that organizational support for Scrum is absolutely very important. Whether it’s a Lean Organization or a Scrum Organization is, from my point of view, just a variation on a theme. Both approaches have benefits and both bring something valuable.

[* Probably the most high-profile set of companies that are using Scrum at the organizational level, are those funded by OpenView Partners:

http://www.openviewpartners.com/portfolio/index.html

This is a VC which is advised by Jeff Sutherland.]

By: Harald Walker

Harald Walker — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:01:45 +0000

In practice that’s where I see the shortcomings of Scrum. Where it starts and where it ends it doesn’t really flow. Scrum focuses mostly on the software development process but without an organization which adapts and supports the idea of lean manufacturing, it is just an agile island in the wild sea. Including what is usually knows as operations and the process of deployment is an important next step. We are working on it.

By: Kane

Kane — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:43:20 +0000

@timothyfitz, funny you should mention that. I’ve been reading that blog without realizing that there was a connection!

Thanks for mentioning it.

By: Kane

Kane — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:41:42 +0000

@Harald, In theory, Yes. In practice, No.

There are many intermediate steps that need to happen before Continuous Deployment makes sense: there needs to be robust CI, a solid set of unit and functional test, and a test environment that substantially close to the production environment. All this takes a lot of discipline and hard work.

At the moment there are probably 5* companies world wide that can do this.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s definitely a goal that companies should aim for. There is, however, much work than needs to be done before most companies can even get to stage 1 (ie. robust Continuous Integration).

*This is a total guess … and it’s probably on the high side. =)