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

Foreword by Martin Fowler

In the late 90s, I paid a visit to Kent Beck, then working in Switzerland for an insurance company. He showed me around his project, and one of the interesting aspects of his highly disciplined team was the fact that they deployed their software into production every night. This regular deployment gave them many advantages: Written software wasn’t waiting uselessly until it was deployed, they could respond quickly to problems and opportunities, and the rapid turnaround led to a much deeper relationship between them, their business customer, and their final customers.

In the last decade I’ve worked at ThoughtWorks, and a common theme of our projects has been reducing the cycle time between an idea and usable software. ...