How to start continuous delivery at your company.

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

 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.

Barriers and benefits of introducing Continuous Delivery.

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.

Continuous delivery - is it worth it?

Scaling means everything and automation is the key to do this effectively.

Being an eMobility leader in various projects across multiple startups, Piotr was responsible for OCPI and OCPP integration as well as EMP and CPO platforms development. With extensive expertise in the open standards field and eMobility tech solutions, he is leading teams of experienced developers and contributing with invaluable knowledge and experience.

Piotr Majcher

It seems like all anyone can talk about in the business world these days is scaling their technology and automating their processes, but the actual process behind this - including the 

Too many organizations are unaware of how much time and effort it actually takes to effectively scale technology and automate processes, leading to frustration when companies discover that the process is more involved and time-consuming than they initially realized. The purpose of this article is to give you a general idea of what scaling and automating really mean, how to determine if a process should be automated, and show you how 

 can help you determine your business objectives and create custom solutions to meet your needs.

Every organization relies on multiple processes to get work done, either as part of their core business or the operations surrounding it. To scale effectively, companies need to understand the details of their processes and find a way to automate them, whether using technology or other methods.

For example, many organizations rely on automated sales funnels, which rely on automated reporting programs to gather relevant data on potential customers instead of relying on employees to complete this labor-intensive task manually.

understanding project delays and how to avoid them

, the planning stage is one of the most critical phases of any project. When you invest time and energy into the planning phase, you are setting yourself and your team up for success later on. That is why the team at SolidStudio always takes the time to learn the details of each customer’s business model in order to create the best solution to meet their needs.

First, we analyze the process itself: If the current process is flawed or can't be improved, then automating it won't improve the situation because it doesn't actually address the underlying issues. By doing our due diligence and analyzing your business, the SolidStudio team can verify that the current process in place meets your organization's needs and can't be improved before determining if the process could benefit from automation or additional technology.

Once the process has been assessed and found to be effective, we know that we are working on a solid foundation, and we can turn our attention toward the question of automation.

As a product development company, our goal isn't to just throw software at a problem and hope it solves the issue at hand. Instead, our goal is to create solutions for our clients so they can achieve their business objectives. While most of our solutions involve using software, even the most elegant piece of software isn't effective if it hasn't been created with the client's actual needs in mind. By taking the time to understand the details of a client's business, we are able to gain a deep understanding of which processes are vital and are worth automating and which processes won't benefit from automation or need to be improved first.

Determining whether or not a process should be automated can be part of a total 

, which involves integrating the right digital technology tools into different aspects of a business to improve productivity and increase the value they deliver to their customers.

The Benefits of Automation: T-Cup & Cracow Local Tours Case Studies

In this section, we will discuss 2 SolidStudio clients who benefited greatly from automating processes that were previously performed manually: T-Cup and Cracow Local Tours.

 is a health and wellness app that helps customers track their health and overall well-being and sends them regular reports based on the data the app has collected. While these reports were initially created manually by T-Cup’s staff, all of the data was already stored in the app itself, making the report generation process ripe for automation.

 for the T-Cup team that allowed them to take the data in the app and sort it into the correct schema so it could be automatically formatted and sent out to clients. By automating this process, T-Cup was able to bring on more clients while also scaling back on the number of workers they needed in the back office, improving revenue while reducing costs.

Cracow Local Tours offers tours to hundreds of tourists each day, and the sheer amount of bookings made it difficult for them to manage their pick-up and one-day trips effectively.

To help them increase efficiency and better allocate their resources, we worked with them to create an ERP system that automatically matched tour drivers with tourists in the same location, thereby reducing the non-revenue generating driving time between tours. This new system also made it much easier for customers to automatically book tickets for larger groups, which are more profitable than smaller groups taking the same tours, allowing the company to maximize earnings while improving the customer experience.

Using technology to scale and automate processes can be a great way to increase efficiency and make it easier for your business to grow if applied to processes that are already effective and can benefit from automation and technology. Before you commit to scaling or automating a particular process, make sure you have a thorough understanding of the processes you are considering automating and have verified that they can't be improved further. The SolidStudio team is here to help you get this valuable information and create automated and scalable solutions that meet your needs.

What Does it Really Mean to “Scale” With Technology & Automation?

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?

Continuous delivery - how to start?

20 JULY 2018 • 7 MIN READ