Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

Chapter 1. The Problem of Delivering Software

Introduction

The most important problem that we face as software professionals is this: If somebody thinks of a good idea, how do we deliver it to users as quickly as possible? This book shows how to solve this problem.

We focus on the build, deploy, test, and release process, about which relatively little has been written. This is not because we think that software development approaches are not important; rather, that without a focus on the other aspects of the software lifecycle—aspects that are all too commonly treated as peripheral to the overall problem—it is impossible to achieve reliable, rapid, low-risk software releases that get the fruits of our labors into the hands of our users in an ...