Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Continuous delivery — the next step in agile management

IT leaders shared their experiences in using the continuous delivery strategy
The strategic impact of continuous design and delivery <small>Source: <i>Adaptive Leadership - Accelerating Enterprise Agility</i> by Jim Highsmith</small>

The strategic impact of continuous design and delivery Source: Adaptive Leadership - Accelerating Enterprise Agility by Jim Highsmith

Time management is the bane of many an IT project.

So, how does an enterprise speed up the delivery process and thereby stay ahead of the competition? The answer, according to a panel of IT leaders at the recent ThoughtWorks Live conference in Sydney, is through 'continuous delivery'.

Continuous delivery is a fairly new concept in agile management. The panel, which included representatives from the Commonwealth Bank, MYOB, NBN Co and Suncorp, shared their experiences using the continuous delivery strategy to speed-up software releases, create automatic processes, and talked about the tools for continuous delivery.

Richard Delisser, executive manager of corporate applications at Suncorp, said continuous delivery helped the insurance company significantly cut down its project cycle time during what has been a “tough year” for the insurer.

“Over the 12 months we’ve been hitting it pretty hard, we’ve halved the cycle time, there’s been a lot of automation and we’ve gone from three releases a year to monthly releases. That's is a big step forward,” Delisser said.

“The other thing is the level of automation is starting to be built towards the assets into sums. Over the last 12 months, we have effectively automated about 100,000 days of traditional testing. Continuous delivery brings it all together.”

Delisser said that by automating processes, Suncorp was able to resolve any errors quickly during testing.

“The greatest example was we found a very significant defect a week before we were going to go into production and we were able to resolve that defect and push it through the testing environment in an automated way."

Edwin Butler, operations and applications support manager at NBN Co, found tools to be an essential part of automation.

"Unless you have the tools to automate your environments, you’re not going to get there,” he said.

Tools for continuous delivery are not necessarily an easy quick-fix solution, however. Jason Chapman, executive manager of continuous delivery at Commonwealth Bank, said finding the right tools that will work in your particular organisation is a challenge.

“There’s are number of off-the-shelf tools that we can purchase that still need to work together and I think that in itself is a big challenge,” Chapman said. “Trying to jump in, buy some tools and then make it work for you and for the people that need to use it is probably a mistake.”

Nish Mahanty, software development manager at MYOB, agreed. Tools don’t always keep up with changing needs in the business, he said, arguing that they should be slowly integrated to support people and processes rather than simply used to set up automatic processes.

“It’s not about the tools. You need to get the people right, the processes right and then slowly put in the tools that support those things.”

Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia

Follow Rebecca Merrett on Twitter: @Rebecca_Merrett

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Commonwealth Bank, Facebook, MYOB, Suncorp, ThoughtWorks
References show all

Comments

1

Jesse Dowdle

Mon 02/04/2012 - 02:47

This is absolutely true. In the engineering department I manage, we have gone to a continuous delivery process in our organization by automating 95% or more of the pipeline from code checkin to deployment. We are a saas company and were releasing monthly before... Now we push code several times a week! Of course once you have his ability you need other technologies that decouple deployment from release to end users... Perhaps a topic for another article?

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: project management, continuous delivery, agility
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Spear Phishing Attacks - Why they are successful and how to stop them
    There's been a rapid shift from broad, scattershot attacks to advanced target attacks that have had serious consequences for victim organisations. The increased use of spear phishing is directly related to the fact that it works, as traditional security defences simply do not stop these types of attacks. This paper provides a detailed look at how spear phishing is used within advanced attacks and the key capabilities organisations need in order to effectively combat these emerging and evolving threats.
    Learn more »
  • Oracle SOA Suite – Oracle BPEL Process Manager
    Changing markets, increasing competitive pressures and evolving customer needs are placing greater pressure on IT to deliver greater flexibility and speed. In response to these challenges, leading companies are adopting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a means of delivering on these requirements by overcoming the complexity of their application and IT environments. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Case Study - TNT Express successfully reduces their paper usage and costs using a new document solution
    in 2009 TNT decided to evaluate the market for new head office multifunction devices (MFD) as their current MFD fleet was almost seven years old. The objective was to reduce the number of devices and improve productivity, meet TNT’s future technical requirements and reduce the total cost of ownership of the equipment. They were also looking for a provider who would provide cost and service reporting as well as help streamline their electronic archiving requirements via the scanning of dockets and documents. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments