Barriers and benefits of introducing Continuous Delivery.

Being a co-founder of Solidstudio, Paweł has got to see all the development phases. He’s a skilled professional with years of experience, both in the software and in the eMobility worlds.

Paweł Głogowski

Barriers and Benefits of Introducing Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery (CD) and continuous deployment are new trends that are becoming more and more popular within the IT landscape. However, at present, only around 30% of IT teams use CD on a daily basis. Therefore, before we try to determine if CD is worth it, let’s start by looking at some definitions:

 This is the practise followed by developer teams to integrate their working copies to a common codebase several times a day. It usually involves building the whole project, trigger executing automated tests and publishing in developer and test environments.

 The second step, after continuous integration, is continuous delivery and this process involves an application being released harmlessly at any time. While it still requires a human to activate the process by clicking a button, the entire process is automated. And, thanks to various tests, CD poses very few risks and will not damage anything.

: the initial costs for installation and configuration of CD can be high and integrating these processes can be very disruptive to business.

: for medium and large organisations that currently use waterfall or similar methodologies, introducing CD means that substantial changes are required in terms of internal processes and staff training.

: during the introduction of CD, you must also maintain your current projects. However, introducing CD to existing projects (especially those managed in a waterfall model) is much more complex than starting a new project with CD in place. Therefore, many companies shy away from introducing CD.

: some team members may be opposed to learning new skills such as test automation, so managers may try to minimise fuss and disruption from staff by sticking with methods which are already well known and established.

Let's imagine that your company is suffering due to one or more of the above barriers. You’ll understand just how hard and complicated introducing CD is, so the benefits must be worth it. How, then, do you convince managers to adopt CD? And what are the main benefits of introducing CD? Let’s take a look:

: one of the most important factors in company performance is the ready availability of feedback on functionality in a product. The speed of this feedback is crucial otherwise innovative products can quickly fail. For example, imagine you’re working with a six month release cycle. Once a new feature is introduced it can take seven to nine months to receive feedback on it. And if this functionality is not acceptable by the customer, this can lead to half a year’s worth of labour being wasted. And this can be costly.

: The release of a product can be a highly stressful time due to the uncertainty involved. If this process is executed manually, then it can be prone to errors. With a CD release model, however, the whole process is automated and the development team can redirect their energies towards producing better software.

: due to the introduction of more and more automated processes, less manual intervention by humans is required. This can reduce team size which, in turn, improves communication and allows team members to focus on other projects.

Despite some initial costs, which may be substantial in certain companies, you should seriously consider moving, even if it’s slowly, towards an overall CD model. At the very least, you should start introducing automation into your projects. It’s very challenging, but the benefits of CD will become apparent sooner rather than later. Most importantly, the benefit of immediate feedback will help your company in creating modern and innovative software. In this article I focussed on the barriers and benefits of CD, but in further articles I will explain how to start introducing CD into your company.

Pros and cons of introducing Continuous Delivery. Visit our tech blog to read the whole article.

How to start continuous delivery at your company.

 I discussed the benefits and drawbacks of Continuous Delivery (CD). Hopefully, I was able to convince you that CD is a must have if you’re striving to be a modern and innovative company. The next question on your lips, of course, will be: how do I start introducing CD into my organisation?

Continuous Delivery is more about cultural than technical change

Firstly, you need to change your entire team’s way of thinking. Usually there are developers, QAs, DevOps and managers in among the mix. They all have different responsibilities, but the whole team is responsible for successful deployment. And, when something goes wrong, it’s counterproductive for team members to start pointing the finger. Instead, teams need to learn to concentrate their efforts on getting delivery working again.

CD also ensures that QA and IT Operations staff are closely involved in working on the needs of the software. Discussing all the decisions, early on, with the entire team allows everyone to be on the same page in terms of architecture and risk. There’s nothing like preparation and CD allows infrastructure changes and code deployment to be tackled with relative ease when a firm plan is in place.

Due to the cultural changes and adjustments required to introduce Continuous Integration/Delivery processes, it’s crucial that your company has strong organisational basics in place to meet these needs.

First of all, treat CD as a process that can be approached in small steps. Your next action should be to analyse your build process, write down all the steps and then focus on two things:

Which are the most error-prone and involve manual intervention most often?

These are the best candidates to automate first.

Once you have determined the steps to automate, you must build pipelines on your CD servers that will automate a trigger building process after each change to the master branch in your source code repository. In the beginning, make your pipeline as simple as possible. It is more important to have the whole process implemented and working so it can be improved and extended rather than focussing on each step independently and attempting to integrate it at the very end. This approach is favoured because you will face infrastructural issues during deployments or executing tests; it’s better to address the resultant issues right away, otherwise you will end up with an integration nightmare. Once your build process is automated and well-established, then it’s time to add tests to the pipeline. AtIn Solidstudio, we aim for over 90 percent coverage for unit tests, but it’s not a must in the beginning.

The next step is to add more and more tests to the build process. Starting with the unit, you should quickly introduce higher level tests, like api tests for REST services, end-to-end tests with various scenarios for web and mobile applications and a regression suite to ensure that nothing is broken. Finally, you may want to introduce performance tests for individual and crucial parts of the application.

With all the various tests in place, you may be confident that your application is working correctly and that your software is ready to be deployed at any time without major risks. Tests are a crucial part of CD, so it’s very important not to bypass writing proper tests during the development phase.

Of course, the whole process will be much easier if you are about to kick-off a new project instead of implementing it into an existing and complex application. However, even when starting afresh, it still requires a lot of discipline to introduce good practices to the project.

CD is a process and, as you know, there’s always room to improve 

 process. In order to be able to improve anything, however, you need to know:

How much in terms of resource is consumed by the process?

In these cases, you need to monitor and analyse the data that comes from your CD servers. Once you identify any problems, work to address these issues. It will improve the whole process by reducing the time and costs of releases.

Despite some of the technical challenges and necessary tools, CD is more about the collaboration between individual people and teams. A team needs to feel like a team, there needs to be a shared concern about the quality of the project. With that in place you can be sure that team-spirit will increase and stress levels will drop among whole team. The final bonus is that your customer will love the shorter release cycle and constant evaluation of the product.

How to start continous delivery? Read our quick guide.

Continuous delivery - how to start?

Leading sales, Martyna had a chance to get to know most of our clients on top of having spoken to hundreds of people from the eMobility environment. She’s gained an in-depth understanding of what’s desired or unwanted in the business and she’s now applying that knowledge in her everyday job.

Martyna Wajda

As the digital era continues to evolve, strategic IT partnerships will only become more important. For small to mid-sized companies, in particular, the benefits of having a tech company play a partner role, whereby IT specialists can actively collaborate with the wider team and help inform business and technology strategy, can be considerable.

But it’s not just a one-way street. Forming a mutually beneficial partnership with an innovative technology company, like 

 , can help optimize both organizations. Quality collaborations can help improve everything from how a company communicates right through to profitable revenue, in short, enabling both companies to achieve more than they ever could going it alone.

The key to any successful partnership is, first and foremost, finding the right company to join forces with. At the very least, an IT partner needs to be able to serve your business' needs, ensure optimum IT performance, and has the ability to meet any emerging challenges head-on. Our guide to choosing the 

 for your business outlines exactly what you should look for and what to expect from such collaborations. But for now, let’s take a look at four key ways a strategic IT partnership can be beneficial for everyone involved.

Two heads are better than one, so the phrase goes. So it stands to reason that three, four, five, six etc heads are even better, especially when it comes to implementing long-standing IT systems. But just as an IT partnership can effectively deliver any technical know-how, don’t underestimate the value any business acumen can offer in return. Pooling and sharing resources can be a highly effective way of advancing both parties on the path to innovation and success.

Like any relationship, the more time and effort that goes into it, the more fruitful it becomes. For an IT company to get a deep understanding of a company’s systems and operations, as well as any technological challenge it faces now (and could potentially) takes a considerable amount of commitment, time, and trust.

A sustained, committed partnership offers, on one side, the benefit of on-going, innovative work and, for the other, the delivery of the most effective IT systems. But more than this, a long-term partnership offers both companies the opportunity to get to know each other’s business and build quality relationships with the people who are the driving force behind it, making it easier to work together and quickly adapt to any challenges.

For any reputable technology partner, the success of your business will become as important to them as it is to you. A quality IT company, like Solidstudio, will be creative in its approach to driving innovation to achieve the most effective technology systems for your business' needs. This can mean not only helping a company achieve a whole new level of digital transformation but keeps IT specialists abreast of all the latest cutting-edge technology and at the top of their game.

The cornerstone of any successful relationship is communication, and business partnerships are no different. In order to achieve highly successful collaborations, regular conversations are a must. Here questions such as are objectives being met and if there are new challenges that need to be addressed can be discussed, and key goals and timelines kept on track.

Partnerships offer a great opportunity to practice and develop good communication skills, which are invaluable in business. Scheduling in time for both parties to step back and measure performance at regular intervals can only strengthen a partnership as it moves forward.

For more information on how a tech partnership can benefit your business, get in touch with the Solidstudio team!

Learn about the benefits of technology partnership - does together means better?

The power of tech partnership

True cost of software outsourcing - how can you meassure this?

After founding Solidstudio, Pawel was an originator in terms of pursuing expertise in eMobility. With the build-up of a solid knowledge-base on industry’s needs & wants, he now keeps a close eye on products’ development. He’s also hugely responsible for the business’ side and designs the business models for our products.

Paweł Małkowiak

Software development outsourcing is the term used when a technology company is hired to create and build a business’ IT systems. A hugely beneficial practise, outsourcing in this way can help small to mid-sized companies in particular not only gain a competitive edge, but significantly reduce costs and implementation time.

While the premise of software development outsourcing is quite simple and its benefits clear, finding a reputable company to deliver such services can be a challenge. Google ‘software development companies’ and the result is seemingly endless pages of vendors offering their services at competitive rates. So how do you know which of those developers will properly fulfill your needs and offer true value for money?

Knowing what to expect from a vendor, from both a service level and cost perspective is vital before choosing the best 

 for your business. There are a number of considerations that will help you identify a reputable software development company, all of which are detailed here, plus how much you should expect to pay for such services.

Software development outsourcing: What to consider

Outsourcing software development involves a significant level of trust from both parties to work successfully. More often than not, a business will have to share confidential and valuable data in order to get the IT systems it requires. Any reputable software development company will understand this and offer a service that not only meets a brief from technological perspective, but a human one too. To find a tech partner who will do just that, look out for vendors with the following attributes:

 – A reputable software development company will be sympathetic to their line of work being highly specialised, and will therefore help clients form requirements, ask difficult question and make sure all parties are completely clear on the business’ objectives

 – Making sure a software development company has the right skillset to fulfill technical requirements is vital, as any gaps in knowledge could lead to costly delays. A close look at a vendor's portfolio will give a good indication of whether the team possesses the correct skills, across the most relevant technology.

 – The more senior a team, the more business-orientated it is. A good way to gauge experience levels is to look at ‘Meet the team’ pages and see what percentage senior developers account for.

 – While a project might need multiple developers input, it’s a good idea to choose a vendor who will assign developers to one project at a time. Not only will the sense of ownership help increase a developer’s output, but means each project has one firm point-of-contact.

 – Any software development company worth it’s weight will help a client see past the ‘now’ with any technical requirements, and offer the expertise to scale a project up or down as needs and situations change.

 – Developers are in high demand globally, but that shouldn’t mean waiting long periods for projects to get off the ground. At Solidstudio, development can start in a matter of weeks, with the initial planning phase up and running in a matter of days.

 – A quality software development company will stay in regular contact with clients for a project’s entirety. At Solidstudio, weekly and biweekly calls are standard practise. Clients are also invited to join internal communication channels and are welcome to dial into daily standups if they so wish.

 – The last but one of the most important considerations of all. A quality software development company will be completely transparent at every stage of a project’s progression. From planning and implementation, to costs and potential issues, any work completed should be visible to the client, at any point. Be wary of talk of or signs of further outsourcing from within the vendor – this is also a major red flag.

Software development outsourcing: How much should it cost?

So now you know what to look for in an outsourcing software development company, the next big question is how much should it cost? Giving an exact figure here is almost impossible for two main reasons; firstly, because every project will have different requirements. And secondly, creating a digital product is a process of constant change, and therefore an estimate provided at initial contact stages could easily change (sometimes significantly) as the project evolves.

In order to get a realistic estimate, the best first step is to spend a good amount of time considering what your product requirements are and drawing it up into a project specification document. This should broadly outline how the required software should function, in both the short and long term, which will help vendors understand what level of work and seniority is required. It will also help avoid any misunderstandings in the development cycle and costly delays.

After sharing this document and an initial consultation with your chosen vendor before any work is carried out, you should expect an estimate based on an initial assessment of how much work is involved and the level of seniority it will require. Solidstudio has a track record of smaller end-to-end software development projects over a three-month period, as well as bigger, on-going projects and so can quickly offer very accurate initial estimates. These would include costs for:

It is worth reiterating costs can (and almost certainly will) change as a project evolves. Be wary of low estimates, cheaper estimates don’t necessarily offer the best value, and can often include hidden costs that soon add up. Reputable software development outsourcing companies will be completely transparent when it comes to costs, keeping clients abreast of any changes, and ensuring to check before undertaking new work that might add to the bill.

 is often best suited to IT outsourcing. This pricing method means fees are configured based on the amount of time spent on a project, combined with the cost of the effort (materials) used in the process. Solidstudio works to an hourly rate structure of $40-75, depending on the level of seniority required, with management overlay kept to a minimum.

For more information on software development outsourcing, or for an estimate, contact the Solidstudio team!

True cost of outsourcing - how can you meassure this? Read our article to find out.

Continuous delivery - is it worth it?

19 JULY 2018 • 6 MIN READ