More than ten years ago, some visionaries got together in the mountains of Utah to relax, ski and discuss on the challenges of their profession. That was the very moment when the Agile movement cristallized. They wrote a manifest and 12 principles. The first gem goes like:
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
And only now we all are understanding what they mean. Even them.
In Software G Forces: the effects of acceleration, Kent Beck discusses the technological and business challenges of making your releases shorter. And why that matters (see also a good summary of Beck ideas by Mary Poppendieck).
On the other hand, Jeff Humble and David Farley have published a (jolt-award wining) book called Continuous delivery, which goes (technological) deeper on the value proposal done by Beck. I highly recommend this talk by Jeff at DevOps Hamburg and the introductory article.
Seems that it takes 10 years for the new ideas to mature and emerge in other shapes and wrappings. Nice to see that we, (“software deliverers”) as a profesion, are continuously improving.
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